I was in a group that got caught by Lon Haldeman early on. We spent some time behind him. I got in and out of the controls very quickly. I ended up with a very social group most of the way to the turnaround point and spent a lot of time talking with Sandra Leflin. At the last control before the turnaround point, I noticed my seatpost had slid down into the frame. I raised it, but soon realized it was too high when my (gastrocnemius I think) heel started hurting. I limped towards the turnaround point and got caught by the group with Sandra. I slipped into their rotation and we pushed through the headwinds.

We all were pretty wiped at the turnaround point and we spent a lot of time recovering. Lon (captain) and Doug Slack (stoker) left at the same time as us. I've had a lot of practice chasing tandems in the mid-atlantic, so I thought I would be able to easily keep up, but with the tandem, a bitchin' tailwind, and my compact crankset, I found myself spinning along at 100 - 110 rpm trying to keep up. I was able to keep up for about 45 minutes before they lifted the speed beyond what I could sustain. After losing the group with the tandem, I dropped down to 20 and figured I would just take it easy and try to maintain a 17 mph average overall. Before the turnaround point, my seatpost had slid down, I raised it (tooo much), so I had to stop and lower it back down, but my gastrocnemius (heel) got messed up and I spent the rest of the ride babying it. I had plenty of time to make it to the finish, so I could go as slow or as fast as I felt like.

The weather was great. I rode with Steve Born and Cassie Lowe for awhile. Steve gave me some good advice for RAAM. Everybody is really friendly out here. Debra Banks snapped part of her hub flange leading to some end of ride excitement.