A weekend in Tooele - part 3

Stage 3 - 49 miles in 2 hours and 6 minutes with 24 of my newest friends. Average speed 23.5 miles per hour, and yes, a sufferfest for me. After the race I talked to one of the Ski Utah guys that has been Cat 4 for a year, and he said this was a pretty relaxed pace.

I like neutral racing. We spent two miles in town going through a few traffic signals at a nice friendly pace. I really wanted to stick to that pace for much longer but my new buddies didn't agree. As soon as the flag person passed by at the end of the neutral zone the pack took off like a bullet. The stats show a jump from 12 to 22 mph right at the 2 mile point. Soon after we averaged over 30 mph for over 5 miles as we were racing a train. Fun.

This portion of the race was interesting. As I was moving up the pack to avoid getting dropped I ended up right up front and did a pull at ridiculous speeds. I pulled for 30 seconds or so and moved off, which started an actual structured rotation with the 5-10 front guys. We did a few minutes of this and it broke down because the majority of the group wasn't participating.

I had over 8 "match burning" events just trying to stick to the group including hitting over 40 miles per hour twice. End result: the whole group, I mean everyone, together at the end for a 40 mph bunch sprint. Serious fun.