Tour de Burg 2015
To call the Tour de Burg a "cycling event" would be an understatement. Five awesome days of racing, riding, and hanging out with a bunch of great people. The "format", for lack of a better word, usually goes as follows:
- start out with a mellow parade pace to a timed section
- race as hard as you can through the timed section
- celebrate finishing the first stage of the day with a delicious lunch made by amazing volunteers
- begin the second stage with a party pace to the second timed section
- after the second timed section, party pace or drive back to down depending on the stage location for the day
Outside of the timed sections there is a KOM (King of the Mountain) and Sprint competition. Within the timed sections there are a Men's and Women's Leader, a Super D, and the coveted DFL (I'll let you guess what that stands for).
This year there were 4 mountain bike days and 1 road day.
Mike Carpenter dreams up the fun and challenging trails to ride; the harder the better.
Even the person who completes the tour in the slowest time has to be a strong rider; if they weren't, they simply wouldn't finish.
After living in town for 7 years, I was finally able to partake in this Rolling Summer Camp.
Day 3; the road day
Photo credit to Kari Carpenter
The short is that it was hard. But being able to ride for an entire day, fully supported, was really great. After riding 23 hours in 5 days, returning to real life afterward was both a relief and a challenge. The Tour withdrawal symptoms are real.
I made some new friends, got to hang out with some old ones, held onto the Sprint Jersey, and ended up 3rd overall, behind Jeremiah Bishop and Nick Waite.
Photo credit: ProTested Gear
I think our faces say it all.
Photo credit to Chris Merriam for the Title Image