The Tour of Lake Mead was this morning. Formerly called the “hangover ride”, it’s a fully police supported 24mi “down and back” to the visitors center or some place in the park down the hill. I wouldn’t really know – I didn’t have time to look. The “tour” started fast from the gun. I talked to a couple familiar faces who all said to “stay at the front” because there were plenty of bozo’s nursing hangovers and late nights. One guy also offered up $100 cash to the “winner”, but it sounded more joking than legit.
The first 2+ mi was all downhill into a headwind. A number of guys including Leonard Zinn were giving it some gas down the hill. When we flattened out, we didn’t really slow down. People rolled through as most guys at the front appeared to be racers of one flavor or another (or smell in one guy’s case). We were apparently going north of 27mph for most of the effort. After a couple risers, the group was thinning out as the downhill guys were spent. Once we hit the first noticeable climb I found myself drifting back a little, so I punched it to get back to the front just to be safe. 15 seconds later this guy in a AMD/Discovery kit starts telling us to “organize and pull through”. I was sort of surprised because it was all pretty casual until then, so I pulled through, looked back and…poof…we were gone. All of a sudden the massive 200+ people that started was now just about 15 of us driving the front.
Some people cut the turnaround, and our group got a little bigger on the tailwind run back, but as we approached the climb to the start it thinned out again. I rode my own pace up the hill and apparently finished “8th” nursing a rear flat. I didn’t know who the AMD/Discovery guy was until I ran into him at the Shimano Booth. Turns out it was Wayne Stetina – multiple time US National champ, Pan-Am Gold Medalist, yada yada yada. 50+ and still tearing it up.
I’ll post pics if I find any. We had a number of guys shooting us on various points so I imagine the Hugger-Green will show prominently.
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