Boulder Roubaix

About 10am last Saturday, I rolled over to preview the Boulder Roubaix course and to see if the race was actually going to happen. It was a solid down pour that I'm pretty sure started coming down harder when I drove back to Louisville. Right about this time, the 35+ cat 4s were rolling out for their race and among the starters was our own Brad Buikema to battle these epic conditions. Less than 2 hours later, on a course that was mercifully shortened by one lap, Brad, no doubt inspired by the viewing of the movie "Road to Roubaix", finished a solid 16th place among the 36 starters.

I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of Brad, but my teammate forwarded this one from after the race. We were fortunate enough to race under mostly sunny skies and the course dried out, so our dress whites don't really show the effects of the course. My teamate ended up on the podium and I wasn't that far behind him, so we had a good race. It did take 3 hours the next day to get my bike back into running condition.

By the way, I'm not smiling in this picture either. Now, I've felt pretty bad after some races. Had to get an IV after a race in Grand Junction a few years back. Vomiting is a pretty regular occurrence in my post race repertoire. But nothing compares to how I felt after Saturday. I'm tired, sore, dehydrated, low on blood sugar, muddy and wet. I really want to get out of my clothes and into a warm shower. However, Mike needs to get his picture taken on the podium and we talked about getting some shots of the RMSS finishers after the race.

And we really didn't get that dirty.