Stage 3

Finally a stage win! The stage was unbelievably hard. Massive climb up over French's Pass that had us walking for close to 15 minutes but the view was spectacular! Over the top was a snow field about 200 yards wide that was crazy! Then we hit this super fast singletrack that had some crazy drop in it that I thought was going to be the first trip over the bars. I guess it's hard to go over the bars when the back tire is almost hitting my stomach. Then it was a long climb on fire road up to the Colorado Trail. Seriously, the most fun I've had on my bike. Jerry and I were ripping through that and it was amazing. If only we could've stopped to rest our hands from squeezing the brake levers. Disc brakes rule! The final major climb was, how can I say this, excrutiating. Over the top and down some fast fire road descents when I started hearing the noise I had been dreading. Stopped to check the damage and it was a small leak so we shot some co2 in and hit it. 3 more fills and we made it to the finish. Then it was wait and see how far up we were on the 1st place team. They ended up about 7 minutes behind us, leaving us just over 2 minutes out of 1st place. They had a flat coming down French's Gulch and we had passed them at about 1 hr 15 minutes into the race. That was some serious motivation knowing they were behind us.
Jerry and I are super stoked to have at least 1 stage win. Tomorrow is another butt kicker. I don't mind that at all when it's being kicked on trails like this. There was quite a bit of change today in quite a few categories, I think. The climbing and mechanicals took there toll. Looking forward to another fun day of suffering!