Tour of the "Gila" Monster

Of course I know how to pronounce it, but saying gea-lah is so much more fun than hee-la. Things are going far better than planned so far. I'm staying out of trouble for the most part, so that's positive. It always amazes me how crashes happen. I saw two out there today and I just had to wonder how/why. I guess I can't say too much. I've had some pretty crazy and stupid crashes in my day. Over time you learn how to avoid these things. The weirdest part about both high speed get-offs I saw today was that I was sitting in the top 10-15 and they happened in front of me. Pretty rare if you ask me.

Anyway, back to the post about me! I'm really please with myself thus far. I'm feeling really good out there, even climbing with the best today as others fell off the pace. I'm not used to that feeling, looking back and seeing less than 15 in the group. The rush is enormous. Here's the recap thus far...

Stage 1

Nothing was really sticking until a counter to one of my moves got away, a full 50 miles into the race. After that another group got away and I was able to jump across to it. We worked our butts off and finally after what felt like 40 years, but probably more like 40 km we made the junction and were a group of 11. We lost a couple after the feed zone and hit the final climb as a group of 9. I was promptly dropped but kept a steady pace. I was caught and passed by 6 others who were trying to bridge in a later group, but was never caught by the rest of the pack. 15th on the day, not bad for a "sprinter."

Stage 2 (today)

Today the move went without any effort at all, it made me very jealous after all the work I put in yesterday. Steve, my teammate out here was able to get across to the group on the climb, so there were now 9 up the road and I had a reason to follow wheels and be smart, the way I prefer to ride. We took it pretty easy up the first half of climb #1, but started to speed up at the top. On the way down we had one of those pesky crashes right in front of me, but I was able to thread the needle between fallen riders at high speeds and not really lose any momentum. Made it down in one piece and hit the base of the second climb. It was game on for this climb. We held a good pace at the bottom, and about 3 km from the summit we started going faaaaaast. When we hit the top there weren't more than 20 of us in that main field (started with about 50). Next up, crazy descent. Nothing much happened on the scary way down to the valley, two thumbs up there. Once in the valley we continued going fast. There was a heinous crash and that was about it for the valley. We hit the final climb and I couldn't quite match the acceleration of the top guy, but was fine in the pack. In the end we almost caught the lead group. I finished 15th (again), only 24 seconds back of the winner.

End Result

I'm sitting in 10th overall, only 3 minutes out of 4th. We'll see if that's doable. I'm sure there'll be people gunning for me and much will change in the TT tomorrow, but I'm confident. I know I'm one of the stronger guys at this point so now that I have the confidence I think I'll do better.

Back with updates in the near future.