300 Warriors

Yesterday Brandon participated in the "300 Warriors" road race, which is part of the Tour of Utah. This is the description from the website:

On the fourth and most demanding day in "America's toughest stage race," 300 citizen warriors will precede the professional teams by 4 hours. Their goal: ride 98 miles and scale 14,778 vertical feet, a feat representing over 28% of the horizontal distance and almost half the climbing in the five-day Tour of Utah stage race. Finishing this ride is the equivalent to riding the Tour de France’s Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Télégraphe, Col du Galibier and Alpe d’Huez.

The race started in Park City, went through Kamas, Francis, and Midway, came down Provo Canyon, up past Sundance and over the Alpine Loop, down American Fork Canyon, up and over Suncrest, and finished up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Check out those huge climbs. Yikes!

The boys and I went to cheer him on at the top of Suncrest. They were great at encouraging all the riders who passed! Here we are waiting for him:

And here Brandon is nearing the summit of Suncrest:

Brandon had said his goals were 1) to finish and 2) to finish ahead of the pro racers, which he did by about 1 1/2 hours (his total time was around 6 1/2 hours). A motivating factor at the very end (of course on a very steep section!), was that Liam was waiting at the finish line. He had ridden all day with my sister Jenni, who drove the support vehicle for Brandon's group (thanks again, Jenni!). Shouts of, "Go, Daddy!" kept Brandon muscling on to the grueling end. Way to go Brandon!