Orosi is a very hard NorCal race.

I think that course profile has to be among the toughest on the calendar. Add some cool rain and some wind and you've got yourself one hard bike race! People must know this, because there was only 30 or less starters in my P/1/2 race. Things staeyd pretty civil, I thought, for a lot of the lower part of the climb. But when the attacks started coming, it was on the steeper parts of the hill and that was quite painful. I managed to survive a few splits until we were down to about 10. My teammate Aaron O'dell and I popped off near the top and that was the end of that! Our teammate Jesse stayed with the next group ahead of us and ended up 6th, which is pretty amazing since his hip is still broken and he hasn't raced in about a month. Jesse=a bag of nails. Aaron and I rode tempo for the rest of that lap, and then slowed way down and kind of puttered for the rest of the second lap. We were joined late in the lap by our teammate Dennis, who was determined to finish. I was very cold though, and I went for the car. Aaron soldiered on with Dennis. I saw him coming back down to the finish, about 15 minutes later with blue lips and a clacking jaw- he too got the chill, but it got him bad. I helped get him back to the car which was about 6 miles away and he was having a pretty hard time! In the end he was fine, just a touch of the old hypothermia. Jesse was 6th and Dennis was 7th, good for them- that's a hard day in the rain! There were only 7 finishers anyway. All in all, it was pretty fun- the roads of this race were incredibly cool, it was an amazingly beautiful area and if it hadn't been raining I think it would have been a pretty awesome day. After the race we all met up in Fresno at a diner where we all powered some chow, and I got to see Dennis and Aaron have an ice cream eating contest which they both "won" (there are really no winners in an ice cream eating contest...). -j