Soto was a nasty one, we started at 3pm, the hottest part of the day.  I started at the front and held my position well through the whole race.  The first 15 or so miles of the race were really sketchy...tons of aggressive fighting for position.  The first 3 climbs were not too hard, but around the fourth, the real attacks started, no one really got away but the field split up a bit.  Halfway through the first lap, I attacked, 4 guys went with me, we were away for a while but it didn't stick, I just sat in until the end of the first lap.  1k from the line, there is a huge 20-25% climb, about 600m long, at the top, everyone was breathing pretty hard, I attacked again...4 guys went with me.  We immediately got a huge gap and before I knew it, we were up to 1:20 gap.  Eventually a Garmin/Slipstream guy and Kelly Benefit guy bridged up to us to make our move that much stronger.  Our gap held for about 30 miles, and we were reeled in slowly by the Hot Tubes team just before the final climb.  I held on and was still in the front...the peleton was down from 78 starters to about 15-20, I was still feeling good, I sat in.  With about 12 miles to go, the feed zone climb came, I was still feeling great, I got 2 full Cold water bottles from Nancy ( the greatest water bottle handeroffer/stepmom in the world) and My Dad.  Just after putting my bottles in their cages there was a crash right in front of me, I high sided my bike and slid sideways to avoid it...I managed to stay up.  Just as i got back in the groove, I looked back to see a flat tire from sliding, I was done.  I got off and waited for the wheel truck...it took him about 3 minutes to get to me because of the crash.  After the change I just rode in wondering what could have happened.  It was a great race and course, but a bit of bad luck for me.



At The Start


The Big Climb


The Reason I wasn't there