Nice

Worked the feed for our remaining guys on Sunday, the feed was right up the hill from the campground, so it worked out good.
Set up and got Groove Talkin and Petit to give me some pointers. Groove is El Capitan of the feed, baby! Got it down! Met the famous XB with the cool ears, so we had a good fun bunch up there on the hill.
Dropped the first bottle I tried to hand off, but Petit saved me with a move right out of the Matrix and got Nate the backup bottle.
3rd lap we saw the break taking off with Pasco, Nate and Walker, then a loong time before Larsen appeared, dragging the pack with him. From then on it was hold-yer-breath time, till we saw this pic at the finish.
Nice work, Nate! The guy has been close so many times this year, totally deserving.
All in all, I learned a few things about the beast that is stage racing, the recovery is SO important to focus on. I think specifically for me I needed more long race miles and more experience with nutrition while hammering. The level of racing was a little over my head as well, real easy to burn matches in places that don't matter, keeping track of who was in the break and how this was affecting things. My teammates were great inspiration and a wealth of information helping me out, everybody sucked it up and worked hard till they couldn't turn the pedals anymore.
One thing that I really enjoyed was the level of competition, guys training their asses off all year and ending up 40th for their team's benefit. I saw athletes racing hard and being secure enough in themselves to give a congratulations to another racer win or lose, nice to see. Just because your an amateur doesn't mean you have to act like one.
Real nice.