Fondo!

Beauty day and lots of fun. I forgot how fun road racing is. I think I was around 3:40, which was an ok ride but sub optimal from a few points as to how it went, but that doesn't really matter.

Cindy and Tania were all smiles and looked great in the "Hot Wheels" team kit. I'm hoping for smiles at the end too. Cyrus saw Cindy in Squamish and said "looked strong".

So starting the 10 minutes early was a blessing and a curse. No sketchy pack riding, but up Taylor way it was fast right away. Or at least faster than I'm used to doing at 6am equivalent Calgary time after a couple nights of scant sleep.

Formed a group of about 10 that wasn't quite the back of the race group, so that seemed good. Pulled my share but not more (unless you count pulling my flab up the hill as a pull), and an hour in felt settled, solid, knew my group buddies, and was having fun. All good. That lasted till about the 70k mark when I ducked into a feed station as fast as I possibly could. My bottles were dry. Problem is, I couldn't close the gap back into the wind. Got close on the hills as I was climbing better, then 10 people downhill are just so fast with no effort. To race this you need either feeds or carry more bottles. So I caught a straggler or two, but 70-90k was solo tt anywhere between 20 seconds back and a minute back of the group. Uphill into the wind. I knew that wasn't going to end well, but it's not like I was gonna sit and wait at the side for a group. It was beauty, great temp, I felt strong, so I just did my thing.

Of course solo into the wind has a predictable result... tired. So I grab a gel and am chugging some water, and hear a noise behind me. Shoulder check and there's a hundred people coasting in a peloton. I get in and I go from 280W to like 100. They surge on the next 5km of hills and I drop cause I haven't recovered yet. I see some of our other group of 10 in there eaten up too.

Once I'm off, Kelley Servinski catches me, he got caught up behind a crash by the sounds of it. Or crashed. Indeterminate. We chat for a bit but split up.

I settle into another pack that is big enough that "everyone" seems to have conserved more which is nice. Headwindy at the end. Some lady next to me biffed a traffic cone and ended her event 3k out. I don't get it, there was kilometers of lined up cones. That one shouldn't have been a surprise.

Guys were lining up their teams for some big train finish... For like a two hundredth spot or whatever, so I just stayed out of those shenanigans.

Watched people stream in for a long time. Tania and Cindy were speedy and happy at the end. Tara who hadn't been riding had a tough finish. And many riders gave rave reviews of their hot wheels kits.

Fun event overall. They have enough money for lots of niceties. It's big though, and 7,000 people just is kind of mayhem.