Tour De Not Organized

First off, I think the idea of the Tour De Park City is great. It's a ride that throws everything at you, narrow roads, dirt roads that make you appreciate your bike handling skills, relentless climbs and of course the lovely headwind.

I arrived a little before 6:00 a.m. and was able to park next to the start / finish. I got dressed and hit the restroom a couple of times. Then about 10 minutes before the start noticed someone wearing a timing chip. Timing chip? No mention of that anywhere in the race packet. Fortunately I found the timing chip line and got mine about 15 minutes before the start.

Start time were all messed up. They combined the 1-3's sent them off then sent off the 4/5's which some of the masters went off with since the guy running the PA didn't have a clue what was going on. Finally we went off. There were only 15 or so 35's and the pace stayed pretty mellow as we left Park City. A couple of guys tried to go off the front just before Browns but they were soon caught on the climb. As we went down Brown's the 45's caught up with us so we had a good pack as we road into the first feed zone.

I made the mistake of actually stopping at the feed since they were only handing up bottled water, not water bottles. I grabbed a banana as well and started to race in an attempt to jump back on the pack. As we turned onto the actual Chalk Creek road I was able to get back on the pack and rested for a few minutes as things started to get organized better. The paceline began and soon found I was expending much more energy then I wanted. Finally at one of the last climbs before the dirt I had enough and dropped off the back. I rode with a 45+ guy until we hit the dirt. His skill on the bike wasn't up to par and I soon dropped him. I then began a TT all the way into the Evanston.

To my surprised Denny was still at the feedzone and he waited for me to fill a couple of bottles, grab some food and we started the long ride to the Bear River Lodge. Denny did most of the pulling and we managed to build up a group of 7 or 8 people. After about 30 minutes I decided that Denny was rolling a little too fast for me and I needed to save something for the big climb and fell off the back.

I rolled into the feed zone with a few people complaining about the extra 5 miles. Once again Denny was there waiting for me, unfortunately they were out of water so I had stand around for 10 minutes waiting for water. No one knew if they had any hammergel but I managed to find a box of it stashed. Finally after what seemed like an eternity I started the long climb up toward the highline trail pass. It was interesting as I was motoring along I could tell most people didn't know just how long the climb was. I was just motoring along about 8 mph and people kept passing me then stopping. Finally just before the top of the climb Kent Carlson who was doing the fun ride caught me and I decided to jump on his wheel. He pulled me and a friend of his down toward the mirror lake climb and as we started up bald mountain the climb wasn't as bad as I expected. I still had plenty in the tank and climbed to the bald mountain feed zone with my legs feeling pretty good. Unfortunately this was the worse stocked station. No energy drink mix or gue. Makes me wish I had dropped a feed there. Just as Kent was leaving I noticed a tandem was leaving as well. Having ridden with some tandems at LOTOJA I knew I was in for a ride. I just sat on the back of the tandem with a few other people and we just let them pull us all the way down the hill to Kamas picking up people as we went.

As I climbed out of the Kamas a few people in our group decided to push up the first climb out of Kamas hard. I knew this was a mistake as the harder climb was from Jordanelle to Brown's. I let them go and managed to catch all of them on the second climb. Fortunately all the wind riding was about to pay off with a nice tailwind all the way into PC. But, I didn't stop at the last feedzone and was now out of water. The last mile heading to the finish was the worst. I had absolutely nothing in the tank. My body was so dehydrated and I was shaking so bad it took some real concentration to shift from my little ring to big ring. Finally 10:14:47 after I started I rolled in. My riding time was 9:48:27 so I was pretty happy with that.

Hopefully the organizer will keep to his cap of riders for next year and avoid the feedzone problems of this year.