Sad note to start with: Two in our group had their bikes stolen two weeks prior to the event date and could not ride with us. Both are relatively new to the sport of cycling and both bikes were under a year old. Getting a your bike stolen really leaves a deep gouge in your soul and spirit that stays with you for years. Shame on you bike thieves! There is a part of me that feels for their lives that must have been so harsh so far that they felt the need to steel the bikes., but then there is the part of me that hopes there is a special place in purgatory solely for bike thieves, that leaves them in a windowless room on a single gear stationary bike, with no A/C, no fans, 100% humidity and a bike chain so gummed up that is takes all their weight to get the cranks to turn, and the inability to stop trying. Hope it's squeaky too!! I'll let you guess which part of me I lean towards. Aside from that the biggest bummer of the weekend was the crazy weather the rolled though AZ the week prior to the ride up through the day after the ride. Much cooler than usual and lots of rain. Got lucky on the day of the ride that the rain held off until mid-afternoon and temps were not too bad with some layering in place for the ride. The wind was a bit of a mother…but with so many people doing the ride it seemed like there was almost always someone to duck behind to help absorb some of that wind, so it could have been worse. Really cool route and roads. Great experience. Biggest event I've ever ridden in. Never alone on this ride. Overall really well controlled and maintained. Wasn't really until the last stretch of road maybe 15mi before the finish that I felt we were sharing the roads with cars. Car traffic was really low for most of the ride. Big sections had entire lanes coned off for the ride and all the police and volunteers were great and friendly and generally seemed happy to be there. Cheering on the riders through the whole event. Lots of spectators out too, along the whole route cheering everyone on. That was so appreciated. Never seen so many aid stations. One pretty much every 10mi. Only stopped at four of them, but was really nice to have the option. Something I had never seen in any events I have ridden in the past, "Bike Caddies" not sure what to call them, but 20 or 30 volunteers at each aid station offering to hold your bike for you while you grab what ever and refill bottles, etc… Loved that. What a great service to have. I thought about it afterwards, they should have had Venmo QR codes on their shirts or a hat that we could scan and tip them for the help. Must have been a long day for them, but they were always smiling and happy to grab your bike from you. However, I've done events that have had a much better variety of foods and energy sources to choose from than this one did…but they had pickle juice at ones I stopped at! So bonus points for that. Starting the day and getting to the race start was a bit slow. Our group was all on the same page there though. We rode to the start from our AirBnB about 1.5mi away and got there about 5min before the start of the race at 7am. The race organizers recommended getting there an hour before! None of us were that eager to get up a 4:30 to get food ingested and ourselves prepped to get out of the house by 5:50am in the dark and in 42 degree temps to stand at a starting area for an hour. By the time we got there we had to roll blocks down the sidewalk along he starting corral before we finally found an opening in the barrier to sneak through, and then proceeded to squeak along the edge of the crowd of cyclists to get up closer, but by that time the whole field of cyclists lined up already were slowly rolling forward and moving along. Worked out pretty well overall. Sporting new gloves, new sunglasses and new sun sleeves for the ride. I only mention that because, 5mi into the ride, still riding in quite the crowd of cyclists, moving at a pretty good clip, I dropped one of my water bottles. Slipped out of my hand as I was reaching to put it back in the cage. I promptly blamed my new gloves! As everybody around me yelled and made fun of me. For a split second I thought about stopping to grab it…but then my common sense took over and I said goodbye to half my water. My friends all offered to share there water with me as needed. it became a bit of a joke for the first half of the ride, once we realized that I didn't take anybody out by dropping the bottle in the crowd of cyclists, thankfully! About mi 30 at an aid station I asked a volunteer who was walking around with a platter of orange slices if they happened to have a spare bottle, figured it couldn't hurt to ask…they did! Though it looked like she pulled out of the garbage, it was missing the silicone mouth piece (maybe that was a good thing) and the inside looked a bit nasty with a little but of something murky left in the bottom. Desperate times though…at least I rinsed it out. Happy to be whole again. Saw something around mile 45 that I would never have had on my race day BINGO card. After several miles of gradual climbing into the wind, we finally made a turn and had a nice long gradual downhill with the wind at our backs. We were all cruising along easily in the mid 30mph range barely pedaling, when a javelina bolted across the road and took out a cyclist about 50 yards in front of our group. The whole thing was a bit of a blur it happened so fast an unexpectedly. The javelina did keep going across the road after being stunned. The cyclist fell backwards at least and skidded, but he was going pretty fast and it did not look good. He was not moving when we past him and as much as we were enjoying those free miles, as we were passing him I yelled to him to see if he was okay, all I could here was "Nooooo". Ugh, of course he wasn't. We all stopped to help him as much as we could. Blocking traffic around him, called 911 and waited for first responders to get there. I picked up his bike and made sure it was okay and functional, it looked to be so, amazingly. We were trying to get him to move body parts to see if he was okay. We eventually got him up and standing just as the first responders were getting there. Thankfully he seemed to escape the worst of it. We left it there with the first responders, not sure if he finished, but he seemed to be functional at least. Now I guess I need to be watching for wild pigs that have a bone to pick with things on two wheels. That was the height of the excitement for the day. Somewhere around mile 55 or 60 I felt the urge to go off on a breakaway. I was feeling pretty good and really wanted to see if I could push it. I pulled away from my friends and didn't see them again the rest of the ride. I think I did a good job fueling and staying hydrated. My nutrition plan seemed to be working for me. I finished about 15min before the rain started. Glad I did, it really started to come down and then rained the rest of the day and into the evening. My friends got caught in it though. I was waiting for them at the finish, but ducked into the convention center to get out of the rain and because of that I missed them at the finish. Ended up meeting them back at the house. I did have to ride through the rain to get home…and got stopped at every red light on the way. I ended up finishing 1002 overall. Think I was 218 for my age group of 50-59. Total time was 6:20, but my ride time was 5:37, which was stellar for me, Super excited that I broke 6hrs. Stopping to help that guy added to that total time and we had one aid station stop that was a bit longer than I would have liked, but happy day overall. Bar is set for next year.