The Elk Is Dead

Firstly, let it be said that without the crack support team of Eva, Tricia, and Deann, we’d all be dead now and that’s a fact. Those three were on the spot with all food, drink, cold post-race towels, and everything else, so a mighty team-wide thanks to them for their excellent job and long hours!

For the racer sorts, it was another slog. Lots of out of staters bringing their A game made for some tough competition along with the usual OBRA suspects throwing haymakers out there. The weather was suspect at all times, especially the last day. The billed epic 103 mile ride with 8 thousand feet of climb was not to be as by 6am on Sunday morning, there was snow on Dooley mountain and a temp of a frosty 35 degrees. The officials made the right call to cut the race significantly and we did roughly 20 miles – 10 out, 10 up the backside of Dooley for a mountain top finish. Had the race gone on as billed, there’s be a lot of other dead people on the roadside right now, so kudos to the officials for making the right call. Sure, there was some post and pre-race bitching going on by some folks (“I can’t see my rival’s number because they’re wearing a coat!” or “I want my century!”) but that’s all malarkey. It was the right call.

The rest of the race went on as billed, and we black and yellow sorts did ok for ourselves. Our men’s teams put up some admirable results in the 3’s and the 4/5 with Robbie “The” Carver taking top honors for the team placing 6th overall in GC. For the ladies, we placed 3 in the top ten overall, with Anna Clark slotting in best placed at 5th! All riders involved were Beth Chase, Vanessa Cass, Erin Willig, Anna Clark, Lana Pressey (3rd in the crit stage! Awesome!), Robbie Carver, Dave Aldersebaes, Joe Leineweber, Brandon Arends, Johannes Weber, the Vetting Koller, Ryan Smith, Andrew Willis, and Jeff Harwood. A big crew, wouldn’t you say? In fact we think we brought one of the larger bunches to the race.We also had the support crew of Tricia Hedahl, Eva Van Duesen, and Deann Krill, with supplemental support and comic relief delivered by one Gregory Sanders.

All the riders had some ups and downs as are wont to happen in these sorts of things, but when all was said and done it was a very special weekend. Most of it was documented, and some of it is fit for public viewing and you can see all those images right here.

Many thanks to Ernie Young, all the OBRA officials, all the volunteers who handed out water or marshalled the course, and a HUGE thanks to wonderful Baker City and its fine inhabitants. What a great race.

If you ever see this outside your hotel room, run.