Well, this was my 4th year of doing Park City Point2Point race and this year was epic for several reasons. First the weather, it rained a bunch on Thursday and again on Friday...but the worst part of the storms came in early Saturday morning about 5:30am and it rained, hard which forced Jay and the Team to postpone the race to 8:00am and also remove the round valley portion of the race which removes about 12 or so miles.
I must add as a note, I was not very pleased with myself on my race preparation...I own every thing you can own when it comes to bad weather cycling clothing, problem was it was all sitting in Las Vegas...a lesson that I'm soon not going to forget...don't count on the weather report!
So we all took off and the first 5-8 miles were slow going, without round valley to shake out all the riders, as soon as we got to the single track it was 30-40 riders deep trying to get a very muddy trail and it took some time for things to open up...by the time we got to Deer Valley the trails were improving and we had all self sorted and things were looking good...a big thanks to John Moss who was waiting at Silver Lake, he took my bike and did his best to clean off the mud which had made shifting a difficult proposition, John lubed up my drive train while I filled my pack and got a few bites of food down.
From there we headed out on Mid-Mountain over till we went up, and up and up all the way up around Shadow Lake...I won"t bore you with the details this year but this is where the race really starts to take it's toll on the body...but I must say I felt great this year, it was tough as always but I was able to work my way up this year without stopping or praying for a miracle of some sort to get me off the mountain.
From there I headed down the mountain to PCMR where Lolly, Sammi and John Moss were waiting and I really enjoyed the sweet downhill sections of the beautiful trails of Park City.
When I got into PCMR I was greeted by the group, I quickly changed kits and filled my pack and ate some real food and was ready to head up the mountain to hit Spiro, John was nice enough to join me at the section of the race,,,so away we went.
We made our way up Spiro to Armstrong over to Mid-Mountain...now this is were the party started...this is where all Hell broke lose...it started to rain and rain and then the hail came and it got cold...I had a cheap poncho over me that helped keep me dry...John had nothing and I was really getting cold with my arm warmers and all that I had on and again John had a short sleave jearsy and I was concerned for our well being and we were a good 10 miles in any direction...we stopped in the trees a couple of times but then we just got colder by not moving so we decided to keep moving torward the canyons, this is about the time John decided to have a flat tire...not good timing, my hands were so cold I could hardly get the tire off...my hands were gone.
But we got a tube in his tire and we took off again, the weather was breaking a bit and we were about 20 minutes from Red Pine lodge, this is were John headed down Holley's and I went up to the top of the mountain and finished the race course and made it into the canyons, by this time the sun was coming out and it was turning into a pretty nice day.
It was a difficult year to totally access my time and my overall performance compared to years past, but all I can say is I'm greatful for good friends to ride with and a loving family who supports me in some thing I love very much...with it being a different race course and a bad weather year, I guess I will be back next year to get my official minus 10 hour mark I need to do before retiring from the best Endurance race out there, and maybe I'll have some company (David Sneed) only time will tell!
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