I decided not to ride to the event and drove from home to the start. this was a good idea because I was pretty waisted by the end of the race, turnes out it was much faster and harder than I had expected. I arrived about 30 min early so I could get warmed up before the start and all the stuff your suspose to do pre-race. I didn’t get much of warm up, I hoped that the start of the climb was a couple of miles away so I could use that. Unfortinatly the climb start almost right out of the school. As we began the ascent, the pack of about 50 split in half and started to string out pretty fast. I was not ready to start gunning for placement yet, I was unsure how I my legs were going to respond since this was the most climbing I have attempted this year. I was hoping to find a nice strong pace that would challange me but not kill me too early since we still had something like 4k of climbing to do. I grouped with about 5 guys and vollyed back and forth to for the whole climb. We passed a bunch of people but it was hard to determine who was with what group and it felt like we were way behind the split. As we approached the 5 k mark there were a few attacks back and forth, one guy split with another rider from the B group and stayed ahead of us. I was spent and curling my toes at this point. Like a heavy train making it over the pass I kept repeating just finish, just finish, just finish. At the 2 k marker I was alone, working real hard to keep my pace. I found a little sprint for the last 500 meters and crossed the finish line, thank God ! I thought I was going to be about 25th or so but finished 15th. Not too shabby, given this was a public race with out an age group. Decided that I need to hammer some more and train a little harder. Looking forward to the next one. Congrats to Bill on his podium placement, and Sandra on her placement as well (is that right Sandra ?).