This past weekend Bozeman hosted the Tour’de’Bozeman.com which was super fun. Saturday involved a Time Trial in the morning followed by the Main street sprints later at night. Sunday hosted the Road Race and the final awards. Mel and I volunteered on both days and also raced on both days in one event each.
Mel did the Time Trial on Saturday and posted her best time yet, which was super exciting. Continuing to beat your previous time is an excellent sign of improvement as well as what to expect of yourself for the future. I was super excited for her, even though she was a bit bummed that her bike was riding the fail whale and was not shifting correctly.
After the Time Trials were finished we spent about 2 hours bumming out and napping in the afternoon. Then we headed downtown to spend about 6 hours helping out with the Sprints on Main Street. The weather went a bit south for about an hour, but eventually turned back to decent and the sprints were off. I held riders for two hours straight while Mel ran around shuffling placements and brackets. The sprints would have been really awesome to watch at the finish line from the sounds of the crowd.
Mel and I ate at Over the Topas after the sprints were over. I highly recommend that you try that place if you get a chance. Its on the spendy side, but defiantly worth it. You don’t order traditional meals, but more like appetizers until you get full. Pretty much one of the best overall meals I’ve ever had based on atmosphere and food, but the company is what made the experience so good 😉
Sunday was the final race out at Bridger Bowl. It was a ~42 mile race for the Cat 4/5 Men, Masters, and Cat 4 Women and a ~70 mile race for the rest. I was part of the 4/5 Men and had a great and horrible race. The race started off really well and I worked my way into a pack of 4 riders that were working on catching the peleton(main pack of riders). I lost steam at about the turn-a-round as we about caught the pelaton. It was all downhill from there on, as far as progress went, it was uphill actually on the way back. On the way back, I think I suffered from a bit of heat stroke + dehydration as my body simply gave up. I couldn’t stand up on my bike. I couldn’t gain speed downhill. It was just peddling in my lowest gear all the way to the finish.
Even with this, I pulled out a 33rd place in the 4/5 pack. Somebody mentioned that I placed a top 10 in the Cat 5’s, although, that is unconfirmed. I’m going to just going to assume that I did place a top 10 in the Cat 5’s to sound cool.