Check that one off his list: Park City Point 2 Point

Saturday Drew raced the Park City Point 2 Point, one of the toughest 1-day endurance mountain bike races in the country.  I am going to throw up a bunch of photos here, but if you want all the pain and suffering, you'll have to ask Drew about the details.

The weekend started Friday afternoon when cousin Milissa and her hubby Christian, came to town.  We had a great pasta dinner at the house that included a salad made with lots of produce from the garden.

At bedtime, we started to hear thunder, then flashes of lightning, and then rain.  Mind you, we have had two significant thunderstorm since May. It has been very dry and trails were moon dust, so we definitely needed rain, but did it have to be today?

We woke on Saturday at 5 to a wonderful steady rain.  I wished Drew and Christian were not racing, because we needed it so badly and it would have been perfect to hunker down and enjoy the rain all day.  But we loaded up and drive to Park City through some serious storms.  We figured there would be no chance of starting.

The start was delayed an hour to let the weather figure out what it would do for the day.  It didn't look good.

Drew seemed pretty content not to race and just blind everyone with his jacket.

But the consensus at the racer meeting was to go ahead and race that day except cut our the first 10 or so miles in Round Valley, which would have been a mud bog.  So the boys suited up.

 And at 8:15 they were off!  Christian is the rider in the center of the photo in black and blue.  I started my job of team photographer off poorly by missing Drew fly by.

Milissa and figured we had about 9-10 hours to do our support thing all day. We had 4 places we could catch them.  So we moseyed to Einsteins for a bagel sandwich and coffee.  We had a hard day ahead of us.

The first place we saw them was at Solomere Drive.  Christian came through first.

With Drew not far behind.  This was the first of many haf-man shots.  

 From there, it was up the chair lift at Deer Valley with support gear in hand.  The fall colors are beginning to show. 

Christian came though the aid station 1 and Milissa helped get him fed and the mud out of his derailleur.

 While I waited for the other half of Drew. 

 We got them both out on the trail again and then we got to enjoy a beautiful ride down the chair.
 

 The next Christian and Drew siting would be on Guardsman Way.  They were both doing OK except Drew's hand was cut open from a collision with a mean downhiller.

 

From there it was on to PCMR.  What a party!  Some pit crew had music going and Olympia beer.  We hung out across from them!  Christian came though first and headed out on the last leg.

 Drew made it through at about 3 o'clock. 

After a quick bite and sweaty kiss, he headed out for probably the worst leg of the race.  Up the climb he went.

At about 3:20 the organizers closed the course and would not let anyone else through the aid station because the sky had broken loose with thunder, lightning galore, and hard rain and hail. 

Drew was out there somewhere, but there was nothing we could do so over to the finish line we went to drink beer and cheer in racers.

At about 5:30, Christian finished the race!!!

And a half hour later, Drew too. 9 hours 55 minutes of hard riding!

 A wet and muddy Park City Point 2 Point in the books!