A new route for this TdF. I was almost a half-hour late starting, so I was riding fairly hard in an effort to catch Pete by the time he made it to the Nordic Center at the top of the paved road on Mt. Pinos. I just did catch him, but TJ was descending and intercepted me about 1.5 miles from the top. He evidently flatted right afterwards for the 1st or 2nd time out of 4x that day due to a defective, brand new Gatorskin, because I passed him on the way down just as he was putting his wheel back on. TJ was not quite recovered from his cold, but still finished strong. Pete was surprisingly fast with as little riding as he has been able to do lately, but ran out of gas at the end. Also saw Jerry on the climb to Mt. Pinos, and he appeared to be in good spirits! The support was great, and the food at lunch and at the finish was awesome (as usual!). A fair number of riders in spite of quite a few "no shows". Overall, and excellent day of riding! I rode a couple of bonus miles by going up the extra mile to Pine Mountain Summit. I was ahead of the set-up for the three rest stops at Heartbreak, the Fire Station, and Pine Mountain, but Francis gave me a coke as he drove up to check on me before setting up the lunch stop. Stopped for 55 minutes while I stuffed myself at lunch! LOL It was pretty hot in Lockwood Valley on the way up to Heartbreak, but cooled off some afterwards. According to my Garmin, the temperatures ranged from 37F to 88F... My average speed was 15.4 mph to the lunch stop, but only 13.7 mph on the leg home. I let Pete start back before me and he waited for me at the Hearbreak rest stop and we rode back together from there.