So the Gila is over. We came, we saw, we conquered. Hopefully one of the Cat. 2 guys will write a lengthy account of every single detail of the race. In the meantime, I’ll just tell you that they killed it. Brad Cole came in 3rd overall after some very strong teamwork to keep him there. Shelden, Krughoff, and Kneuven were 11th, 12th, and 13th respectively with Bingham in 32nd.
In the crit Krughoff pulled in some big money for the team, so I had to represent in the Pro race also. Taking Allen’s advice I attacked from the top of the course in hopes of winning a prime. Sure enough, the small man’s advice worked out and I netted $60, a pair of socks, a nalgene bottle, 3 pens, a t-shirt, and a magnet. I will use the magnet to hang my official letter from the Mechanical Engineering department stating that I have passed all of my preliminary exams. It was really fun, my only regret is not bunny hopping the drop in the road during my attack. It would have been the coolest thing I had ever done, ever. Maybe next year.
During the final road race, Ryan and I had to break out the ropes and harness to ascend out of the Gila cliff dwelling area. Probably the worst part though was that we didn’t even get to see the cliff dwellings. They were tucked away another mile down the road I guess. I would have asked my friend Chris Baldwin if we could stop to see the sights but he was in a group up the road. Meanwhile, the group I was in did manage to break the 5 hour mark for the race much to the dismay of some of the people in the group. A few of us wanted to go pretty hard the last mile to finish under 5 hours. Others clearly did not want to go hard and told us in french how much they were hurting. Nevertheless they all survived. Well, one poor soul flatted 1 mile from the finish…how sweet is that??!!
Oh yeah, even the Health Net team (which I had some interesting relations with during the crit) thinks our Cateye argyle socks are the sweetest piece of cycling apparel on the market. How do I know? One of the guys told me as he dropped me up the climb near the clif dwellings…
That’s that, off to collegiate nationals next weekend,
Collin
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