Cyclists climb one of the many hills between Coalville and Evanston in the Felt Bicycles Tour de Park City on Saturday. The racers began in Park City, rode to Evanston, then headed back toward Park City for the finish — a total of 170 miles. (Mike Terry, Deseret News)

Although not pictured above, I have never had the opportunity to be in the front end for the whole of a race.  Even if I am only racing Citizen Cat 5, this category always seems to have strong riders.  I had two guys that I ride with all of us stay together the whole time as well.  They sent out the entire Cat 5 group at the same time.  All ages, so Geoff and Eric and I were together.  I looked at them as we were rolling out and said lets keep at the front end of this field.  We did, and watched who was in front and reeled them in if they took off.  We even were thinking of jumping at one point but decided to let them naturally fall off.  By Evanston, there were 9 remaining racers of the Cit 5’s of which the three of us were part of. I should say that someone got off the front at the start, and we are unsure whether we ever passed him or not.

5th back and feeling good

Same group headed to Evanston

Outside Evanston, one Cit 5 rider went down when he crossed wheels with the person in front of him. It was kind of ugly to see, and the screaming didn’t help. The scream kind of stuck in my head for the rest of the day. The three of us were lucky (Blessed), to not have been caught up in the ensuing pile up. That accident dropped our 9 racers to 5.  Geoff and I stopped and wondered if we could help but soon realized what are we going to do.  A car and a truck stopped so we now needed to catch back up to the group.  Geoff was a mad man getting us back.  I felt like I should jump up and do some pulling but not when he had a pace like that.  That stretch from Evanston to the Uintahs is a difficult one as the mountains seem so tiny and sooo far away.  Slight gradual up hill all the way.  As we came closer to the base of the Uintahs I was pulling and I guess a little too hard as I pulled out I looked back only one guy was with me and the others a ways back.  I sat up and waited while that guy continued on.  When we connected back up the one guy that did not ever do any pulling asked if that other guy was in our category.  I then knew this kid was pulling a fast one.  Not pulling and knowing who is in or out of his group.  He has something up his sleeve.  We continued on to the feed zone.  I saw that first guy continue through and grabbing a bag, we however stopped and put some powder in our drinks and got some oranges.  I was ready to jump on and take off but Geoff and Eric seemed to want to wait for the other guy that was with us (no pull dude).  I took off and started to easy pedal and wait for them, no pull dude was with them sadly.  I wondered what he had on the docket.  When it kicked up I pulled back and he said, “oh is it my turn?”  I said sure, and pulled back so he was on his own.  Then he took off. Now he was the winnie rider and did just what I was afraid of.  Oh well.  Geoff and Eric and I regrouped and later on up we ended up passing “winnie rider” then I felt bad as we never saw him again.  As far as we knew we had one rider a head still.  As we were nearing the top Geoff told me I was climbing extremely well.  I felt good.  Normally he can drown me on the hills but I guess it is a little more even playing field with 120 miles in the legs.  He was staying right close to me, Eric fell back just a bit.  We passed the last guy just before the top, same guy that took off at the base of the Uintahs.  We stopped at the feedzone but I so wanted to get out before he did and yet he slipped out with the cat 4 women.  I yelled to Eric and Geoff and took off after him.  Geoff said it took everything he had to catch me, then we caught him, then Eric popped on.  From there we barreled down Mirror Lake Highway to the base.  Just outside of Kamas there was another feed zone, I needed water and they were holding up Heed.  I was now at the last girl holding liquid and I grabbed for it. She heard me say water and pulled it back out of my hand so now I was left with nothing so I stopped and walked back to her went to put it in my cage and the lid came off.  They tossed me another and off I went to catch the group.  I saw Geoff sitting up so I knew if I pushed I could catch them, which I did.  On the hill out of Kamas we dropped our guy pretty easily so now we had to just stay ahead of him.  Then as luck would have it, Eric got a flat.  While fixing it guess who flew by on the down hill.  We pushed hard to catch him but Eric bonked along the road to Home Depot, about 5 miles from the finish ( you have to eat all the way to the end apparently he says), so Geoff and I continued on and passed that one last guy.  Geoff asked, “So how are we going to finish this?”  I replied by telling him that I would go in first, then he would follow right behind me.  Laughing he said, uh no.  So we knew it must be a sprint, and probably a pathetic one.  About 1 mile out I swung wide and dug in deep.  I thought for sure he would grab on to my wheel but when I looked back on the final turn he was a good distance back.  Pretty cool to speed through with tired muscles and adrenaline.  Didn’t feel like putting my arms up over the finish cuz it was only Cit Cat 5 but still cool that we were all in the front.  My time was 9:07, Geoff at 9:08 and Eric coming in right behind us at 9:10.  We shaved over 1 hour off of our last years time and hope to do it again next year.  Great weather, beutiful areas to ride and good company.  We all rode strong. Geoff and Eric doing some good long strong pulls.  I don’t think any of us suffered too much either, which was nice. That climb out of Kamas into a good headwind kind of sucked. It was a long day though.  Good job to the organizers, this year was fantastic!  Although the times are all wrong on the final results but all good.

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