San Dimas Stage 1!!!

Well, as to be expected, it was hard. Just under 4 miles straight uphill. Ouch! You can spy the results here, and catch a great write-up (as usual) over at PodiumInsight (as well as a nice photo of me -- thanks Lynne!) I threw up a 14:20, good enough for 48th place, 1:27 behind the winner. How on earth Ben Day went up that thing SO much faster than me is a good question, but maybe the answer lies in the fact that I outweigh him by ~35 pounds. I blew-up during the final mile of the race, and sure, I would have loved to have done better, but I'm at least happy I sprinted that last little bit at the end -- look at how tight it was around me:

48  johnson, sam  Hagens Berman LLP Cyclng Team 

14:21.54    @    1:27.75

49  stewart, scott     Team Type 1             
14:21.58     @    1:27.79

50  FRATTINI, DAVIDE   Team Type 1             
14:21.80     @    1:28.01

If I'd sprinted just three-tenths of a second less hard, I wouldn't have cracked the top 50. Also, mad props to Mara Abbott for resetting the women's record up this hill (for the third time in a row!!!). Mara posted a whopping 14:31 -- a time that would have put her 62nd place in the pro men. Holy shit Mara, nice work.

Now we're gearing up for what should be an extremely "fun" (read: ball-bustingly hard) circuit race. Re-pinning numbers, filling bottles, pumping tires. We pre-rode the course yesterday, and it is awesome; it's got high winds, tight corners, rough roads, and two gnarly climbs all packed into a seven-mile circuit. It's not so bad -- unless you're doing it 12 times in a row. Stay tuned!