Congrats li10up...80 or so miles is still an accomplishment! This was my 5th HHH, and they seem to get better and better each year. I hope you decide to do it again next year, because it really is a lot of fun if you can find ways to deal with the number of people out there. After all, it is the crowd and the energy that make the ride the event that it is!

That being said...I did have my own moments of annoyance out there. We did not do the mass start...as planned. We started a few blocks up from the start line, after the racers went by. Everything went well...we got to Hell's Gate (~60 miles) in 3.5 hours. After Hell's Gate I always breath a sigh of relief. I just tell myself I am in the home stretch now. Winds and temperatures were not too bad this year (certainly not near as bad as last year). We did not have the usual south winds after Hell's Gate...they were out of the west, and the high in Wichita Falls for the day was 94.

After Hell's Gate is where I started to get annoyed at the cyclists. For some reason, a lot of cyclists think they are in the Tour de France and can discard their empty gel packets, water bottles, wet towels, tubes, etc. on the side of the road. The town welcomes us every year...and that is the respect we show them? Volunteers have to get out there and clean it up. How hard is it to carry your trash to the next rest stop and discard it there? Anyway…

Another thing that really gets to me are wheel suckers. They do not announce they are right on your wheel (which is really not safe), they do not ask to draft (out of courtesy), and they do not offer to return the favor (just plain rude). For some reason this year was really bad. And for some reason I seem to attract them. I am not an extraordinarily fast cyclist...but I am steady and I think that is why they like my wheel. Early on in the day...when I had someone on my wheel, I would adjust my pace, stretch, do little things to make it annoying to draft me. But later that day, I was too tired to do anything about it. At about mile 90, I had a man pedal up along side me and say that I had a long line of guys behind me. I told him, loudly, that they were all wheel suckers and wanted to reap all the benefits without doing any of the work. He laughed and agreed. Then he said…you should be flattered that all those men are drafting you. And I just laughed, dryly. So on a downhill, I increased my speed a bit and lost them.

Despite those annoyances...all in all…it was another great HHH. I finished in 6.5 hours (total time), and felt pretty good at the end. But I think next year I will put a sign on my back, “No wheel suckers allowed!”