The
next morning, I quickly learned that Jim likes to push bigger
gears than I do, as we headed out to climb over the continental
divide for Jim's first ever tandem ride. The scenery again was
spectacular and we had a special treat with a rainbow appearing
on each side of the road ahead of us.
The racers came zooming by us at around the second snack stop.
For a while, they seemed to be taking it easy and we almost
caught back up to them on a descent, but then they put the hammer
down and tried to hurt each other on the final climbs.
The race ended on a long steep hill that hurt me quite
a bit. I could just imagine how it felt to sprint up this thing
to the finish line of a race. When we stopped, we heard lots
of comments from the racers about how bad it hurt, but John
seemed to like it and had a second place to prove it. We quickly
moved Jim's pedals back to his own bike, and set the bike back
up for John before heading off to lunch.
John and all the other racers talked about taking it easy for
the rest of the day, but the race seemed to continue all the
way to the motel, as we ended up averaging almost 20 mph for
the day.
