Stage 3 in the books-I loved todays route! We had perfect weather once again, and today featured 3 aid stations due to its length/epicness. Caught up with the other SS woman (Sundra) fairly early into the race; she had swapped out her 21 for a 23 cog so I was a bit surprised I still out climbed her, but I took it! I happened to do the hike-a-bike portion up to 12,000 feet at the same time as Mike, so we stopped for a few pictures. This casual approach to racing immediately bit me in the butt because Sundra did not summit much later than me and totally smoked me on the descent! Oxygen-deprived me also locked out my fork instead of opening it fully... You make stupid decisions when youre at that elevation! Luckily for me I caught back up at aid station #2, and there was a nice long fire road climb after that, so my quest started again to put as much time as possible on her before another long descent. That descent was freakin awesome by the way, but I took it easy at the bottom part where it was a lot like West Ridge/J&H, and I wanted to play it safe with 3 more days of racing ahead. Later I learned that Sundra blew through all that on her bike, so good thing I worked the climbs as I did. After aid #3 it was only 8.5 miles to go, but the first 2.5 were up, up, up and away, with a never ending steep uphill that required more hike-a-bike. Ready to be done, I was glad for the last few miles of flowing mostly downhill single track, and managed to finish about 3 minutes ahead of Sundra. All in all a really awesome day! Almost 6 hrs on the bike though...my butt was ready to get off that saddle!
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 21:59:52 +0000
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