300 warriors pre-ride

Saturday morning i met up with 15 other cyclist and pre-rode the last 3 climbs of a ride some of us are doing in august. The Tour of Utah bike race is back this year after taking last year off due to lack of ability to raise enough sponsorship dollars. The hardest stage of the 5 day stage race has a 99 mile course starting in Park City, riding on the north side of Jordanelle resevoir over a climb into Kamas, then south into Francis where it heads up another climb and down into Midway. It winds its way around deer creek res. and down provo canyon for a couple miles to the Sundance turn off. It goes over Alpine loop and down american fork canyon. It goes up and over Suncrest and then up wasatch Blvd to little cottonwood and ends at sonwbird parking lot #2. All in all it is 99 miles with 14,000 + feet of climbing. They opened this event up to 300 non-pro riders to start 4 hours before the pros and do the same ride. the difference is that we will not have been racing for 3 days before hand and have another race the next day.
We rode down to provo canyon and up it to the sundance turn off. The temperature was great for the first 2 climbs but by the time we got to little cottonwood it was hot. The alpine loop was beautiful and as i took my time getting over it, i snapped some pictures. Once you get past sundance the road for the last few miles is only one car wide and is nice and smooth. My total distance was 98.5 miles and i only went to parking lot #1. I think of the 16 that started, only 4 made it the whole planned distance for the day.