Tour of Utah 3.0: Remember That Time Mt. Nebo Kicked My Ass???

Holy friggin' moly. Here's what we did today (thanks Garmin Connect):

What can I say about this stage? Let's just put it this way: the final 20 miles lived up to their reputation. Scaling 4,500 ft Mt. Nebo was everything it was cracked up to be. I was with Levi (and the rest of the field) until about 12 miles to go. In that 12 miles, he put a whopping 18 minutes in to me. I wasn't soft-pedaling either (people who soft-pedaled lost half an hour and got time-cut) -- I was going pretty hard.

Here's the part that I wasn't prepared for: the 60 miles of brutal crosswinds and echelons that preceded the final climb. It was awful. About 20 miles into the race, we rounded some bend and the aspect changed, and the wind shifted from a mostly-head to a cross-head wind, and all hell broke loose. By the time I hit the base of the climb, I was already fucked-in-half (pardon my French, but it's true).