As I write this I am sitting in a coffee shop sans internet connection so it won’t actually be posted until this is all old news. None the less, typing I am and typing I shall continue to do. The prologue is about an hour and forty five minutes from beginning. It’s 2.8 miles total starting in downtown Bisbee. When I say downtown you need to take that with a grain of salt. Apparently Bisbee was a mining town but the mine shut down in the 60’s. It’s up in the mountains a solid 5,000+ feet above sea level nestled in between some peaks. Apparently when the mine shut down people left en mass. Some hippies stumbled upon the town and bought up all the property dirt cheap. It’s a very cute little town.

But back to the cycling. From downtown we ascend through the town for a little under two miles. It isn’t terribly steep, but it’s definitely up. With about a mile to go the route leaves town and becomes decidedly steeper until it ends at the summit. Right now, and likely when we start, there is quite the nasty headwind the entire way up. Should make it interesting. I’m not sure how I’ll fare but my strategy is go hard for the first two thirds then go a lot harder for the last bit. Get to the top and fall over gasping.

So far we’ve had one adventure. On the way to the grocery store this morning we were pulling into the parking lot when suddenly there was a TT bike hanging off the side of the car. Due to space constraints I didn’t bring my TT bike so I was fairly confident that it wasn’t mine. From the back seat I hear Justin Morgan say “I guess I should have zip tied that.” No real harm done, but it was extra funny given that J-mo and Andrew Fischer had just been reassuring Andrew McDirmid that Broadmark cycling was held together by Zip ties and they had never lost a bike.

**Three hour time lapse**

Well we’re done with the prologue and at our host housing. Jeffrey (our team manager) and his girlfriend Laurie are cooking up what smells like a fantastic dinner which is very good news. It means that I can look forward to a good meal and try to forget about the prologue because the prologue sucked. I have no idea what the times are I just know mine wasn’t very good. I’ll find out how I did relative to the rest tomorrow. Yuck.

The host housing that we’re staying in is this great adobe style house just outside Bisbee. I haven’t met our host or her Great Dane yet, but apparently he has a habit of peeing on peoples beds and belongings. So far I’m very happy here, I’m just hoping to avoid waking up to a Great Dane Golden shower.

**Two day time lapse**

Well, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that I got my suck out of the way, the bad news is that I sucked. Prologue, as mentioned above, was relatively booty. Stage one wasn’t bad for the majority of the race. Andrew Fischer, Justin Morgan, and I were doing a good job of making every break. At the first sprint I led out my teammate to and we took second and third (time bonuses). Andrew made a break that we all did a good job of marking the chase groups. Then at the end I positioned myself stupidly behind a group of people that got gapped and I couldn’t close.

While I was warming up for the TT I flatted twice. I gave up on my disc and begged a training wheel off of one of the Velo Bela girls. My TT was unimpressive to say the least. Justin Morgan on the other hand put out a blazing time that was good enough for 3rd.

In the final stage we had a long descent then at the bottom a break went off. I moved up to try and bridge, but halfway there my front derailleur cable slipped and I was stuck in my small chain ring. Stuck in my small chain ring with ~80 miles to go. Just before the final climb I totally cracked. I had spent so much time and energy spinning my legs off trying to stay with the pack on the flats and downhill stretches that I was completely done. I DNF’d.

So that was at the same time the biggest race I have been to and the worst I have performed. I expect that there will be more competition at bigger races and I might not do as well, but I know I definitively underperformed. Some of it was bad luck, but some of it was just stupidity on my part. I am going to take that, learn from it, and do better at Gila.

The plan from here on out is three fold

Step one: Pull head out of ass
Step two: Get bike fixed
Step three: Do well at Gila

Steps one and two have theoretically been completed, but will have to wait until step three for confirmation on that. I’ll update when I can.