Andrew Attwell was 3 seconds off the fastest time (Cody Canning) and Steve Lund was 7 seconds off the fastest time. Wow! It's enough to give me atrial fibrillation!
Lots of other familiar names with lightening fast times.
Funny story: just 5 or so km into the ride, a couple of fellas touched wheels and, after a good deal of erratic and panicky bobbing and weaving, came crashing down. (That's not the funny part. Patience.)
In the course of said bobbing and weaving, one of these unfortunate souls came mighty close to taking Isaac down with him. Isaac managed somehow to stay upright; but in his close encounter with Isaac's right hip, the crashing dude collected a souvenir – namely, a sizeable swatch of Spandex from Isaac's shorts.
For the remaining 135 km, those of us in the front group were treated to pink and fleshy views of Isaac's right ass-cheek. He, meanwhile, got to enjoy some airy ventilation as the pace heated up.
I went by one of the crashed riders moments later and noticed that a chunk of his fork blade was still attached to the front wheel lying several meters away. Thankfully he was walking around okay despite the heavy initial impact.
Another great day of cycling in Victoria. We had a pretty good day overall. Mandy finished second woman overall for the second year in a row and this time I didn't have to take a short cut to keep up with her.
In general the event is well organized with lots of traffic control where it's needed, lots of volunteers, really excellent medial assistance, and a proper meal and beer included in your entry. One of the stories I heard from Seamus was that his dad had an actual heart attack during the ride and spent the night in the Royal Jubilee. He's fine now and got great care from the ER doc at the medical station he pulled over at.
There were a fair number of incidents on the road - riders in the ditch or picking themselves up - nothing unusual for this kind of event and probably due to the high number of out of towners who took part. Luckily we managed to aviod getting tangled in any of them. The route was great as usual. I really think that this event is one of the best for the riding. People say that the Sea to Sky highway is scenic but riding through Metchosin, Ross-Durrance, Old West Saanich and the like is pretty nice, especially when you get waved through the intersections, like Sayward.
We saw a few people at the start line - Mick, Calgary Steve, David L, Kenji - but once we got rolling it was pretty hard to keep track of anyone. The start felt a lot faster to me this year - it was controlled but I think it was pretty much a free for all down four or five lanes of Government St all the way to Gorge Rd. You had to pay attention. The climb out of the lagoon is where it started to spread out and from there on it was give it what you got. I kinda forgot how long the ride is, and it's certainly not flat! Just over 2100 meters of climbing and not much in the way of flat until you get into the waterfront ride home.
We kept criss-crossing with a group from Vancouver wearing Fort Berens Winery kit. They had a couple guys who were real power houses who would just floor it whenever it was flat, but every time they hit a little rise or a proper hill the pace would come waayy down. They had one member who was obvioulsy the weakest and they would drop the pace on the hills to ensure that they stayed together, and they did for the whole 140K. Really impressive team ride. At one point on Oldfield I left the group and rolled way ahead, only to look around about ten minutes later to find about 30 people lined up on my wheel. We stuck together after that and the last 20 K or so was nice and fast with these guys and a few of us rotating off the front.
It's just a great event for our city. I chatted with a guy from Vancouver who was staying in our hotel - he was here with his team for the weekend. I met a guy from New Hampshire who was here with 20 buddies. Seems like there was a lot of that. I know there are people in the club who have a gripe with the event or with Ryder himself, but man, this event is good for our city. We should all consider taking part, even if it's taking your kid down to the kids' race or something like that. Victoria needs more of this stuff.
