We woke up Saturday morning at 3am to howling winds and blowing rain. It was nasty out. I had flashbacks of the Sunburst mudfest from 2005. We hemmed and hawed for a half an hour about whether we should make the 2 hour drive down. The weather channel showed a huge green cloud over the entire state of Arizona. We decided not to go, until Zach found a Doppler radar forecast that showed a clear section over Fountain Hills. Once we saw that we jumped in the car and started the journey.
We were late pulling in, which turned out to be to our benefit. Had we been on time, we would not have seen Brady, who helped us get some prime parking right by the transition zone. The proper place for us to park would have been down the rode in the competitive track parking lot. It was sprinkling as Zach picked up his race packet. It was starting to get light out as the racers were called up to the line.....light enough to see how scary the sky looked.
The riders were off at 7:14am. I went and checked out the setup that Brady and his 4 person team had. The race directors set up up the course so the it wrapped around the entire Pemberton parking lot. Brady's team had a tent set up right along the course, so we could see the riders as the were heading back in from the 15 mile loop and then they passed right by us. I ended up hanging out with them most of the day.
I kept track of his lap times and would watch him roll in. From there he'd have to ride around the whole lot, which gave me time to pick up his supplies and meet him in the transition zone.
For the most part, I brought him water bottles and hammer gels, although on one stop he needed to be re-lubed. He was eating the PB&J I brought while I shot chamois cream down the back of his shorts.
It rained on and off all day. We did have a few short burts of nice weather and a few long stretches when it downpoured. Other than it it was misting most of the day.
Zach finished 6 laps. Not as good as he's done in the past but not so bad considering he hasn't really been training. I was impressed that he raced at all. Moving here, we certainly never thought we'd have rain to contend with. If it was me racing, I'm not sure I would have gone through with it.
I'm glad I went with to support Zach. It was also fun to hang out with a few other riders from Prescott. Christina came and hung out for a while too, so that was cool. We skipped the ride we planned. Decided we will have many opportunities to hook up. Plus we really enjoyed spectating for once!!!
2 comments:
What the? Looks like he could have finished another lap... I know he's riding strong enough to get than in - did he loose his competitive edge? Keep racing, it will come back. Maybe one reason is letting him saddle up on the 'old-gold'. My guess the last two laps were on that thing... Good job though. 4:43 at the Tdf was as much saddle time I could stand. He did 2x that.
Dude, I did the whole race on old-gold. The course was not that technical and did not want to ruin any other bikes. Yeah, I could have headed out on another lap but with how my laps in the peanut butter had slowed I would have been wandering back in the dark. I felt pretty bad on the 6th lap and was freezing. We also had some pretty high washes with some strong currents to walk through. It was a little scary.
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