Auspicious start, 'No', great ending 'Yes'. Along the route today we had a bit of everything. The early morning "out" to Stinson Beach was cold and really a bit uncomfortable. The first climb to 'The Rock' came way too early for my soggy legs. Still, we negotiated the climb and the rest of the morning was pretty much easy downhill riding. It was really great to have SAG for K Sue's 'Buddy Ride' because it always make us feel just that little bit better.
The ride from SAG1 out to Stinson was still pretty cold and was kind of and off and on affair. Ira and I rode a good portion of it together and then we finished up by pacelining into Stinson Beach with David Zankowsky.
Once at Stinson we took a break and a couple people got espresso before we headed back towards SAG 2. The ride back was going great until we learned that a couple of riders were down. We were all hopeful that it wasn't anyone from TNT, but, sadly, it was two of the riders from Team "Wrong Way". Thankfully, we learned later from Coach Doug that everyone was alright except for bumps, bruises, and scrapes.
Along the way, Coach Cliff and I managed to get into a paceline with the fast kids from Team Shake and Bake. The combination made for some seriously fast pacelining. We were cruising at between 22-28 mph from the Nicasio Reservoir all the way to the ball field at Nicasio. It was a struggle to just to stay in line since I was pretty much on red-line the whole way. Still, I just buried myself to keep from losing contact (hopeful that I wouldn't pay on the final climb). The good news is that the final climb wasn't too much to deal with at all. Coach Cliff, David, and I rode up together laughing and joking as if we were Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin (talk about bad accents).
Team Rawhide had another fantastic day on the bike and rolled in as a unit once we got "Short Rib's" tire fixed after he flatted while riding with T-Bone less than one mile from the finish. The unity of this team is really impressive and makes riding together that much more fun. The photo is of our "Caesars".
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