The forecast for the ride was rain. It rained very heavily Friday night during dinner and there was thunder and lightning. Bob, Doug, Sonny & I spent the evening trying to decide how to dress. I came up with a pretty good solution - dress like it was a dry ride and strap my rain jacket to the top tube. It was a little ghetto but I think it worked really well. I managed to get about 4 1/2 hours of sleep but the hotel was very noisy. Lots of street noise and you could hear people talking on the sidewalk, and then there were all the freight trains blasting their horns as they came through town all through the night! Fortunately the day started off sunny but it was colder than forecasted and I under-dressed. I was cold most of the ride and I never felt great on the bike - I was lagging most of the ride. We managed to make it through the dirt section before the rains. It wasn't until lunch that we started to feel some drops. After lunch there were a couple of short periods of rain and about half of the ride back was just cold and wet. At about the 50 mile mark I started feeling discomfort in the back of my right knee like before when I had my saddle to high. I actually had it at the perfect height last weekend but fiddled with it and I messed it up. At the next rest stop I lowered it and it immediately felt better. But then after the next stop, my calf at my knee felt strained and would feel that way for the rest of the ride. Along with being cold and lagging, I was also getting tired from all the yo-yoing in the pacelines. It was frustrating and terrible. Also the roads seemed to be in worse condition than last year. My butt took a beating. Lastly, there were periods of sun but most of the ride was cloudy so the scenery wasn't as spectacular. Part of the reason the ride felt so hard was because we went a lot faster than last year. That's the positive I suppose. Thanks to the guys for taking turns pulling me home at the end.