Epically beautiful ride with beautiful riders. Strong trio that included a lady who doesn’t race - mostly goes hiking… yet she displayed perfect world class form on the bike, was core stable, powerful in every pedal stroke yet fluid and unwavering into the wind, in side winds, tail winds, had natural speed under all conditions! Temperatures got hot once we turned inland. She never complained! She had a relaxed focus that’s rare to see in action. Many of you probably know of her? There was 2 men there that displayed amazing power outputs! One of them comes off as a mild mannered Clark Kent kind of character but on the bike he becomes the silent but deadly when it comes to speed. Especially time trailing off the front. One of them rode a bike that had no seat or even a seat post forcing him too stand and pedal the entire 100+ mile ride! Not only did he set the pace most of the ride, but because of his standing up position he pushed perhaps 4-5 times the wind drag as we did! His bike required constant arm, chest, shoulders, back, core, abs, his entire body participating all the time! The amount of energy he had to of put out is incomprehensible to me. Never mind the amount heat he produced which would have led to massive sweat loss. Erik Pippins the coordinator of this ride did an amazing job 👍🏾 He even arranged a SAG vehicle to show up at about mile 70 with coolers of cold water and other drinks on ice and a cut up watermelon 🍉 to chow into… and didn’t charge a cent! I rode in the lead bunch with the 3 riders mentioned above until notoriously the heat turned off the power in my legs. I had to let them go once the pavement tilted upwards. This area seems to be my achilles right now. Fixing these will now become my focus through the week now.