Cannot get enough of this.

What have I been up too since the prolific China blogging? Who cares. Watch this video.

First of all, person proud of their fitness, you may go ahead and give that up right now for 1 of two reasons. 

1. You are not as fit as anyone on the 1989 Aerobic Gold Medal Team. Therefore, you should give up immediately out of shame. 
2. There is not a chance in this world your pride can even come close to even the least proud, most self conscious, dude who forgets a dance move in back at 43 seconds in.

Right at about 17 seconds in I realized "wow, and I thought I was committed to something, I guess not." 17 seconds. That's all it took for me to realize my recent self loathing about my cycling career was misplaced, and I lack the commitment it takes to be even an Aerobic Champion in 1989 before the advent of the Vitamix or the paleo diet.

I think it is also important to note that all of these people eat gluten, because this is before 2014, so take that fitness buffs.

We can all learn so much from this video.

1. We should all aspire to be the dude in the front of a 45+ person 80's Aerobic dance team. And when your moment to do the slither step comes on competition day, you take all those years of preparation and dedication, and deliver. Deliver with a smile. You did it. You won.
2. Hop run every where you go, while clapping.
3. When you snap and shuffle, give us a big kissy face that says "yea, looks good, dont it?"
4. Dance like nobody's watching, or, dance like the dude at 1:18, either way, the message here is to not worry about what anyone thinks. Even if they think "Holy __"
5. If at first someone steals your "all lined up and rotating" camera pose, try, try again.
6. TALL WHITE RUFFLED SOCKS
7. Dear wedding not-dancers, find a partner, and do whatever it is they did at 1:56
8. Finish everything you do in life with a flex pose.
9. Kick fabulously. 
10. Classy =  Big hair and shoulder shrugs. Dirty = Big curly black hair and.... (see 2:24)

I cant get enough of it. Im sure my roommate is thinking that I have a problem with Taylor Swift, who I generally have no opinion about, however I am grateful she exists even if this is her only contribution to my life. 

So, the next time you are stressing about, well, anything, I prescribe this. People are awesome, and if you work hard enough, you can lead 45 people dressed in the greatest of spandex to a title at the 1989 Aerobic Dance Championships.

Day 16 and 17: Done and Done!

Lets start this final China blog off right:

CHEERS!

That's me, post stage 13, in bed, drinking a warm beer. It was probably liquid rice, but who cares, at least the rice has been fermented. 

So, China was a long haul. I think we all had moments that we thought we were going to quit. (See: The Dark Times) and moments we truly were thankful for (See: The Russian Motorcycle). As a team we came away in 5th overall, Chad Beyer finished 8th on GC, Gavin and I both got 5th on a stage, and Taylor sprinted his way to 7th one day. We didnt win, and that was disappointing, but we were Americans navigating China and 10000+ feet of altitude eating only rice and drinking only bottled water. We came together and worked hard against some great teams, and I think we can all be proud of the way we raced. 

Now that I've said that, lets get back to China being China. I think that 5% of the people I saw in China were police, military, or some kind of security force employed by the government. That many people tasked with telling a generally obedient population what to do all the time is probably the reason people dont really care to listen to this dude trying to direct traffic as a bunch of foreign bike racers caravan throuogh Lanzou on their way to the last hotel of the race:

Ok you guys, time to stop now

No! Really! I mean it! There is a bus directly behind me!

YOURE GOING TO HIT THE BUS YOU INSANE PERSON!!!

Oh dear, someone did away with the cop...

 For the first time all race I finally found some good Chinese seasoning:

In case you cant read it: "MSG"

Mike Woods and I had spent the second half of the race rooming together, bleeding on our beds in some sort of missing skin quarantine enacted by the team management (Real reason: Bruno was sick and Dave was happily back in America). Before the last stage we got to our hotel room and, before even unpacking, sat at the window in awe at the craziest roundabout in the world, a true metaphor for the way China operates:

Priceless.

We did the last stage, which was easy peasy, and then we were FINISHED!!! Instead of doing whatever we wanted, however, it was back on the buses for the closing ceremony! Here is what I figure the planner sounded like in the organizing of this hour long presentation of cheese to the winners:

OK FIRST we will have that one group of moms who dance do the one song they know on repeat until the ceremony is ready to start:

THEN, to signal to everyone we are ready to blow their minds, we will have cheek-syncing professionals pretend to play annunciation trumpets before every different event!

Ahhhh yes, the sweet sounds of auditorium speakers playing the sweet sounds of trumpets. THEN we will spell our own language wrong in the program:

CHIESE! ITS ART! WONDERFUL IDEA! Oh im on a roll now! THEN get those singers, the ones who dont sing, and have them stand in front of the group of talented dancing children and blow smoke on all of them!

Oh they will all be on the edge of their seats!

Edge of their seats alright....

They must have fallen off they were so excited!

MAGNIFICENT!! NOW, THE FAKE SEE THOUGH UPRIGHT VIOLINISTS!! NOW!!!

BRAVO FAKE PLAYERS!!! MORE SMOKE!!!

Sam was so excited he melted. Taylor is.... amused.

 I CAN NEARLY ALMOST FAKE CONTAIN MYSELF. What do you mean we cant fake drumming? Ok fine, real drummers, but im sure they wont be as good as fake ones....

The girl 3rd from the right was very concerned about getting her hair in the air.

OHHHH MY GOODNESS WE ARE DONE IM SURE THEY CANNOT HANDLE ANOTHER MOMENT!

Yea, that was probably it.

Finished with the race, and the ceremony, we were free to roam. The guys found a pizza hut and I found some domesticated pigeons that the children in the square were playing with. We ate. We packed up. And I went straight to bed because, as i have always said: "If i go to sleep now, tomorrow will come faster."

It did. At 4am I woke up, too excited to sleep, and went and sat in front of the breakfast room door until it opened at 5am, ate an egg and some toast, was the first one on the transfer bus, and peaced out to America where I was then offered $600 to take a flight that would have gotten me home 1 hour later and I refused it.

China was amazing, for sure a highlight in my career, but as I write this more than a month after it ended, I am sure the nostalgia is high and the memory of the Yak In My Hip has waned. Reguardless, the race was amazing, well run, and we got to race against some great guys (despite us all trying to kill each other on the last 2 stages).

In closing, I give you Gavin's carry on bag:

Thanks for reading! Off to Alberta next week!

Day 14 and 15 (Stages 11 and 12): Things Just Got Real

WHERE TO START?! Oh I know. UHC's Director got stabbed with a screwdriver! Apparently he cut a Chinese director off in the transfer caravan (don't know what that is? It doesn't matter!) and when we stopped for gas and snacks.....

Interruption: What do you do with 198 (ok, by this point in the race it was more like 120) cyclists, all their staff, and all the race vehicles on a 400k transfer? You let them pee for heaven's sake! Those gas stations will never be the same.

....HE STABBED HIM WITH A SCREWDRIVER. Like this:

"You cut me off to be with your other team car? Ok, I stab you with... what do we have? No, a pencil is lame, what else? Who has a pencil? Honestly? Use a pen. OH PERFECT WE HAVE A SCREWDRIVER!"

I would say that was a bit of an embellishment to an equal and fair response, but we are in China, some stuff is different here. Luckily, the screwdriver was dull, but it left a nasty bruise and, in addition to a staff member getting hit with a suitcase in the elevator and a rider being held to a wall and nearly punched, its safe to say tensions were running a bit high.

So, here is what was going on at the race at this time. We had 3 stages to go, all circuit races, all a far cry from the +200k climby stages we had become accustomed to. Over all those mountains, and through all those cities, and after sleeping on all those hard beds, only 12 seconds seperated 2nd place (La Pomme) and 3rd place (Kolss super team... i added the super team part). On these circuit races there were time bonus sprints, and Kolss super team was better at sprinting than La Pomme soon to be sad team. In the prize breakdown, 2nd place overall got TWELVE THOUSAND more dollars than 3rd. So begins the entire peloton watching Kolss super team steal a $12,000.00 piece of candy from La Pomme getting robbed team.

In stage 11, Kolss did a leadout for the first time bonus that was honestly harder than the finish leadout. I countered that insanity, ended up solo for a bit, then a large group of guys not willing to work together caught me, some team missed it, and our minute gap was zilch in pretty fast order. Taylor countered that and bought himself a ticket to the pain cave all day, the field let him and one other guy go, just so Kolss could continue to ruin La Pomme's day one second at a time. Ultimately, Taylor was caught, and a man with eyebrows plucked into the surprised expression won the stage. It is important to note that, as the heaviest guy in the race, he spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time hanging on to cars to make time cuts. This was stupid.

After the Kolss shinanigans, Stage 12 started off with a crosswind climb, but everyone knew what was going to happen, Kolss was going to ride a team time trial and then laugh at La Pomme as they emptied their pockets. So, for the first time at the Tour of Qinghai lake on a climb, nobody attacked. In fact, the only person TO attack on this day was Chad Beyer. Why? Because this race is stupid now. That's why. Chad did not make it.

Now, I was in a bad mood because I was missing a very important wedding on this day, a wedding I had waited 14 years to see. With barely enough internet to even find out where I was on the planet, I felt terrible that I was unable to be witness to such an important and exciting day. As i grumbled my way into my kit, I saw an old man wield his camera, aim at my buttox, and snap the shutter with a grin on his face. I chased after this man with the intent to throw him in the river, but with my pants half way around my legs, I was no match for his limber, perverted, stupid self. I hope he tripped and fell in the river.

Tomorrow marks the last stage of Qinghai lake. Tune in for Mike Woods and I pontificating on a traffic circle, a closing ceremony featuring a plethora of people not playing the music that they were playing us, and other things hopefully wrapping up what was an unbelievable trip!

Day 14 (Stage 10): Breakaway Pee Break

I advise you to get caught up on the Tour of Qinghai Lake so far, here is the first post.

OK. Before we get into the day, lets first talk about how China seems to feel about all the ice in the world:

Silly Rabbit, Ice is for melting!

And yes, I'm talking about the Polar Ice Caps. I write this on a patio in Boulder, CO where I saw what seemed like a picnic, only with weed and nothing else. AT LEAST WE PUT THE ICE IN A DRINK FIRST (or bongs, apparently).

Ok, with that out of my system, on to stage 10!

Blurry. Just as I remember it.

Another day, another stage profile that underestimated just how hard the climbs would be. We started out on that not-a-climb-in-chinese climb, attacks flying, dudes wishing attacks would be done flying, and the yellow jersey decidedly marking me. No, seriously, we had a talk about it after the stage, and a few times could have been a coincidence, but of the maybe 7 times I attacked or followed a move, 6 of those were accompanied by the yellow jersey "HELLO JIM IM ON YOUR WHEEL" but in Kazakh so it sounded different. We determined he thought I was Chad. I evaded him all the same, because that's what I do. IN THE BREAK was I, other things that I was:

- Hot
- Hydrated, too hydrated....
- Still sick of rice
- Eating rice cakes (gag)
- Peeved at the level of work-together-ness in this group (that being equal to none)

We hit a tunnel at the top of a climb, and suddenly we were in a vacuum where there was no draft and we constantly accelerated until being shot out of the other side like sweaty princess cannonballs, 2 sweaty princesses got dropped, sitting on is a bitch! You got what you deserved.

Later on in this slog to end all slogs, we still had 4 minutes on the field, however nobody seemed to be trying to hard to keep that gap, nor did the field seem to care that there was a bike race happening, so we got to the top of a fake climb and, as well hydrated hot cyclists sometimes do, decided to take a pee break, IN THE BREAK. Unprecedented. Unbelievable. Un... lucky!

At the same time we decided to empty our bladders, the field decided to empty our hopes and dreams. I guess guys started to attack on the climb, which in conjunction with our pee break, caused the gap to go from well over 4 minutes to 36 seconds, all in about 3 minutes. BALDERDASH. And, wouldnt you know it, A guy from Kolss came across the gap! Standard.

At this point I was used to insane things happening at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, but this seemed to put me over the edge. The break immediately started attacking itself, literally with our man parts still out, and all hell was most certainly breaking from being unloose. Tight. Hell was no longer tight.

Hell was breaking loose.

You know what? Screw it. I went back to the field. In time to go up the next categorized climb, nearly getting dropped, and at the top I decided that I was over this race. We teamed up to do a leadout at the end, had the front with 1k to go, but then the Yellow Jersey decided he was bored and won the damn stage. I. Well. I was flabbergasted. I feel like I need to post a picture now.

Only one pair of feet in the air?! I cant believe it, normally there were more feet than heads visible on the transfer bus.

Ok, back to my feelings about the yellow jersey. In an email to Bobby Sweeting that night, in response to the question "Hows China?" I replied (among other, rather censored, things):

The yellow jersey is Vinokorov's Chernobyl baby that we are pretty sure, much like rookie of the year, slipped on a bike at some point and broke his body into being the best biker of all time. The only difference being he will not be throwing any slow balls in the world series, he will just cover every move until 3rd on gc goes up the road, Chase him down, and win the field Sprint by a bike length with his mouth closed. Then punch an Iranian through a tree just because they attacked too much.

So, all is normal here. Glad to hear fatherhood is awesome. Stay away from sea slugs and the "pulled face" they were serving last night.

Sincerely,

Jim, the tired.

That would be that for the day. 

Tomorrow (a two stager): A director gets stabbed, Kolss begins to slowly take $12k from La Pomme, Taylor rolls the break because "why not, this race is now stupid", I chase an old man off for laughing at my butt, and nobody attacks but Chad!

Day 13 (Stage 9): Nothing Day

Rested, happy, full of rice, and off the antibiotics, I started the last 5 stages a new man. After some 900 miles of racing in the first 8 days, the last 5 seemed kind of like an easy week. I made an early break but Astana decided that the beak wasnt dangerous enough for them, so they chased it back and let a move go with a guy only a minute down on GC in it (and with Taylor, who is absolutely flying at this point of the race). The thing is, if you didn't succumb to China in the first week, you were probably going super good the last 5 days, which contributed to some of the speeds we achieved each stage. So with the break doomed with a GC guy in it, we settled in and made sure Chad was safe and Sam was protected for the sprint. Thats pretty much how every circuit went, so how about some fun stuff instead?!

Gavin: "Hey guys, do you think I can have granola and milk out of this plastic bag?"
Taylor: "I dont see why not"

Thankfully Taylor had a bowl, which he failed to mention before Gavin poured a whole box of warm apple milk into a bag with a hole.

This immaculate, unnecessary, and shockingly clean hotel lobby acts as a nice metaphor for many of the buildings in China: Big, Vacant, and Lacking Purpose.

Cleanest floor in the world?

The floor was so clean I am surprised we were not asked to wear cotton booties while on it. But then I realized that would not be necessary because this lady was ON IT:

Then there was this boutique, which...

Pretty un-Boutique-y

Relic-ery? Stone-greens? Im pretty sure there wasn't a door to get in there, much to the chagrin of many a hotel patron who forgot their dusty strange rocks at home.

Taylor is the Zen master. Ive said this before, and I continue to believe it to be true. He brought with him on this trip a large plastic clear teddy bear filled with frosted animal cookies and on the top had written in sharpie "do not open until stage 10!" Half of those cookies were gone by stage 10, but I believe it is because we were all stealing them one at a time (and one counts as "as many cookies stuck together as possible")

Ball of frosting and cookies

 We were driving and saw this, and then played the game "what the hell could that possibly be?!"

Believe it or not, nobody got it right. Its a 60-foot tall metal flower. Because YOLO?

 Finally, at dinner, we were treated to some of the chairs that the Olympians sat in!!

We need 38,000 custom chair covers STAT

Ill admit, this was kind of a nothing day. But stay tuned for pee breaks IN THE BREAK, a director getting stabbed with a screwdriver, a man that tweezers his eyebrows into the "surprised" expression, trumpeters cheek-syncing, totally fake musical instruments, and a dancing group of middle aged women with the one song they know on repeat!

Day 12 (Rest Day):

First of all I would like to point out that Phil Gaimon has become kind of famous. Here is a graph of the last 8 days of traffic to my blog leading up to Phil tweeting it:

Like, I totally know that guy, you guys.

That's all I have to say about that. Moving on to.... THE REST DAY! Lets all hope there is lots of laying and not a lot of this:

A little PSA in the hallway of the hotel

A rest day means we actually got to go get our bikes from the mechanics for an easy stroll. We found out that Zach's working conditions were less than ideal:

The mad mechanic checks the hub body that I destroyed yesterday.

On our way out to the easy ride I noticed a rather unnecessary label on the elevators. Its a pretty good bet that if you have it in China, we've got it in the USA, unless that's rampant communism and the plague.

Hark! An elevator in the wild!

Having seen my first elevator, the mechanic's dungeon, and what a worldwide pandemic looks like, I was ready for an easy ride in China! Here is the only video, of many, that I took where I was not audibly honking at cars or pointing the camera at buildings and saying "that's probably where they keep the rice, there's more rice storage, that's probably more rice...."

On this rice, er, ride we saw a ton of things. We are pretty sure this was a driving instructional facility, but since there aren't 50 cannons firing pedestrians, trucks, busses, mopeds, buggies, bicyclists, and other cars at you constantly, these people will be sorrily unprepared for the reality that awaits them out there in the real world.

Practice stopping on a hill, I assume the instructor is slapping this person in the face constantly

I was more than enjoying myself, as evident in the videos of me squealing in delight at everything we saw while I was taking videos that I will not post on here for my own sake. I felt like I could do 8 more stages in a row instead of taking a rest day, so the fact that I was allowed to make some decisions for myself and explore China a little was beautiful payback for the suffering from before. I figured I should get something besides the Yak in my Hip as a souvenir, but im not a real material needs guy, so when I saw this happening I got an idea:

After a few minutes of me flashing money, him refusing it, me pointing at his brush and taking my shirt off and holding it up to him, we were on the same page. A crowd had gathered, because that's what you do (at least its not America where people just stand in lines all day when there is something interesting or good happening), and everyone was delighted to hear me butcher Jai-OH which is what everyone yells at you when you ride a bike past them. However, for no money, the kind man wrote Jai-Oh on my jersey, and I am so excited to have it:

Im saying that word wrong, but its kind of hard to read...

Once the ride was over it was back to laying down for a change and hanging out with the team in a non-race related fashion. We watched an infomercial about what we figured was an edible (questionable) sea slug that looked like a spiked pickle that was for one of the two following things:

1. Increase Fertility
2. Render one Infertile

The lady selling them could not seem to keep them out of her mouth when there was an open package around. Check out Taylor's face (far right) while we watched this thing MULTIPLE times:

She just gobbled that thing up!!!

Gross. We watched it again.

As I mentioned before, we took to reading all of the welcome binders, tonight's had a particular way with words:

BACK OFF, I WILL REABDABLE YOU!

FANTASTIC.

Before the night was over I got a chance to take a picture of a lady taking a picture of us taking a picture with her friend.

Those ladies on the right just finished taking a picture of us. We were there for a while.

Chad and I went out on a little walk that night to explore. It was cool to see how many people were out and about being social at 8pm on a Sunday night. There were drum-dance lines and rollerbladers and people doing cool talent show type stuff with a ball and a paddle, and a lot of people out walking with their families. We stood out a bit, but at least it was different than laying in bed.

Last thing, today was the day that Chad, who brought 20 MRE's to China (military meals ready to eat), got a tiny bottle of Tabasco in one. Something tells me the military is eating better than I thought.

Look at that little bug!

Rest day success. Laundry was hanging on the windows like normal drying out. Mike Woods was leaking out on to the bed from his arm and leg. I had eaten my fill of rice. Bag packed for tomorrow transfer. Water with salt made for the next stage. Legs massaged. READY TO KNOCK OUT THE LAST 5 DAYS!

Day 11 (Stage 8): HANG ON FOR DEAR LIFE

Look at this crap:

For Pete's Sake

If you are not a great climber and you open the race bible and look at this page its the same feeling you get when you open mail first because you think its a check and find out is a pretty sizable bill you forgot about. Its sad, and it kind of hurts. You kind of wish you would have never opened the book/envelope.

But, today I was feeling like a rich guy who gets bills, AINT NO BILL I CANT PAY.

Here is yet another time the race profile can be confusing. See the first dotted line about half way up that mountain? That is the "Start of the KOM" or the start of the climb. Now, it doesn't take a genius to point out that no, the climb started a long time ago. I just found a perfect video to describe what racing this climb was like for me:

Just think of me as the guy in the red, and the entire time before the dotted line is the part he is totally crushing the guy in yellow, but right when we crossed that dotted line....

I watched a front group of 20 and break of 8 ride away from me as I lost about 3 minutes to the leaders by the top. That's how that goes I guess. I knew I had good legs, however, so I rolled the dice and began the descent with the intent of making it back to the front of the race.

A group of about 40 guys formed behind what was about 40 leaders, 4 minutes down, and began to attack each other because nobody wanted to help anyone else, but everyone wanted to be in the front. I navigated the attacks (my specialty) and found myself in a group of 8, 4 minutes down on the leaders with 140k to go. We worked hard together, 8 guys from 8 separate teams, and somewhere before the Category 3 climb later on the stage, we caught the lead group!! Take that climbers!! It was great, Taylor, Chad, and Mike were all hanging out in the field, I rolled up and all 3 of them yelled at the same time: "JIIIIMMMM!!!!!"

"HEY GUYS! IM BACK!!"

Gavin had made his way into the breakaway, and we had 4 guys in the front group, we were a Continental team having a party on a 215K stage that briefly orbited the moon!!!

Then we hit the Category 3. I am starting to believe that in China the number 3 means "worst number ever" because all the cat 3 climbs were WAY TO DAMN HARD. I think they count 3, 1, 2, 4, Green, 6, 7, 3 million, 9.

By having 3 million after 7, it makes it much easier to count the number of people in every city in China. Smart move.

The climb was awful, but I was not getting dropped again, so, as I watched the Iranian KOM jersey push the fattest man in the bike race up the climb as I was hanging on for dear life, I wished for the first and last time that I was also on TPT Petrochemical Iran so I too could get a push. After an eternity, and numerous caffeine gels, I made it over the top, our group took like 3 minutes or something out of the breakaway, and it was back to 5-Hour Energy Party Time!!!

The 4 of us discussed the sprint, which basically went like this:

Chad: "Hey Mike, want to sprint?"
Mike: "Hey Taylor, want to sprint?"
Taylor: "Hey Jim, want to sprint?"
Jim: "I sure hope Gavin sticks it!"

To our relief, Gavin's group held on to a minuscule advantage at the finish line and he collected 5th on the day.

Having finished the 8th stage and knowing there was a rest day the next day, I was more willing to let the standard 200 spectators that gathered around the team to take pictures of us changing go relatively un-accosted. Although a middle-aged man grabbed my arm while I had only a towel on to pose for a picture that his 8 year old daughter was taking and I told him to bugger off. You're too old to be doing that and not old enough to excuse yourself for thats! I felt kind of bad, but I was sure he would steal my towel and run away (I don't know why, I had no prior experience leading me to believe this to be plausible).

On to the transfer bus for the longest transfer of the race. WHO CARES ITS A REST DAY TOMORROW WHOOOHOOOO GIVE ME SOME POTATO CHIPS THAT ARE "POTATO" FLAVOR THAT'S PROBABLY FINE!! Taylor continued his daily consumption of 7 to 11 chocolate bars. We tried what we thought was apple milk, which cant actually be a thing, it was gross.

Also, check out these transfers, 400k of people watching us go by because the government shut down all the roads for the entire transfer because HECK WITH YOU PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY, WE DO WHAT WE WANT!

Ahhhh man. Great to be on to the rest day. SO MANY PICTURES AND VIDEOS TO COME TOMORROW!

Day 10 (Stage 7): The Russian Motorcycle Haunts My Day and Subsequently My Dreams

In the elevator after Stage 7 a sprinter's team asked me "We had 6 guys swapping off on the front chasing you guys for an hour and only pulled back 5 seconds, what the hell was going on up there?!"

To that, as the elevator door closed on them at their floor, I looked with a blank stare and said "the Russian motorcycle. The. Russian. Motorcycle."

Stage 7 is a great example of what I love about racing in big UCI stage races. You can get in a breakaway on a day people figured would be for the sprinters (according to the stage profile, which I shall address in a second, but we were all wrong about that), and have 4 guys ride so hard the field actually might give up, but then a 1000m climb at the end of the stage surprises everyone by being far more difficult than a Category 3 climb normally is, and the entire field explodes! Check this out:

That Cat 3 Probably isn't too hard.....

WHAT THE HELL WHAT THE HELL THAT CLIMB WAS SUPER HARD!!?!?!

 Ok, enough foreshadowing. I was feeling like a new man on Stage 7. Infection was under control with Antibiotics (which you can buy over the counter, next to the live chickens, not sketchy at all), sleep schedule was on point, my mood was 100% better than the Dark Times, and the day in the Grupetto served my legs quite well (despite being 6 and a half hours). It was time to race!!  The opening circuits were actually raced on MC Escher's Primrose Stairs in the downward direction.

It started off going down this big hill, we went around the whole circuit without any uphill to speak of, and suddenly we were back at the downhill again!! I was surfing the front waiting when I saw RussVelo and Kolss attacking, so I went with it, did a hard lap of the primrose stairs, and that was it! I was having a blast because the Russian guy was pulling SO HARD that it kind of made me happy inside, this of course would all change later, but for the time being life was good, we had over 4 minutes, and the Russian Motorcycle was in high gear.

Taking a pull while the Motorcycle contemplated his next massive effort

Another cool shot form Daebong Kim

We were going so hard that at one point the field, already 4 minutes behind, took a pee break and essentially gave up allowing the gap to grow to 9 minutes for the 4 of us. WINNERS! Right? How long is this climb again?

The guys back in the field later told me that when they hit the climb it seems the Incredible-Amazing-Climbing-Iranians-Come-One-Come-All! noticed the same thing everyone else was realizing: this climb is way harder than we thought. What do the Iranians do when there is a hard climb? ATTACK!!!!

My group had started to ride easier on the climb, with 9 minutes in hand we all figured it was a day for the breakaway considering the next stage was so hard. The next time check we got was 2 minutes at the top of the Category 3, which prompted the Motorcycle to ATTACK!!!! 35k to go, with a small climb, and then 20k slightly downhill to the finish and I went from being happy as a clam in the draft of the strongest rider on the planet with 9 minutes advantage, to alone 40 seconds behind the strongest man in the world, 20 seconds behind a cross-eyed Ukranian rider from Kolss, with 2 minutes on the field trying to hang on to the podium. WHY IS THIS RACE SO STRANGE?!

I put my head down and rode as hard as I could for the last 35k with the Russian and the Ukranian riders painfully close, but impossibly far away. With 2k to go a group of 3 from the field caught me and immediately attacked on the uphill finish. I stayed with them long enough to drop one guy, but ended up 5th on the stage when I was so close to the podium. The Ukrainian was 4th. If we would have worked together we would have rounded out he podium behind the Russian, who probably won by about 2 hours.

Crushed.

Lesson of the day: if the guy who was a domestique for 7 years on Katusha is feeling good, you may end up bonding with a Ukranian after the stage having both been terrorized to the core for 4 hours, despite not speaking the same language.

Second lesson of the day: When Mike Woods does a superman on the finish line, he loses a lot of skin and a lot of clothing, but not a lot of positive attitude.

Third lesson of the day: Taylor destroyed everyone in the field sprint for 7th. Its not really a lesson here, but he schooled everyone for 7th and its worth noting.

Day 9 (Stage 6): GRUPETTO and Taking 20% of Numbers

Stages 2, 3, 4, and 5 were all very strenuous in their own way for me, so with the infection and 4 more stages in the mountains at altitude before the rest day, I needed some rest. This is a fantastic time to talk a bit about the relationship between the stage profile maps in the race bible, and the actual stage profiles. Here is today's:

NOTE: Only 2 categorized climbs today. The first being only a Category 1... This is a lot of BS

Ahhh yes, I remember it well, 3 hours into the stage somewhere in-between the two categorized climbs already with 2000m of climbing wondering "What asshole built this road?" If you don't know much about biking, here is a quick note. On stages like this, often times there is a group of guys who end up coming in far behind the leaders, its a group that has decided "today is not my day" for any number of reasons:

1. Being Fat (a sprinter)

2. Being Tired

3. Being Sick

4. Being Unmotivated

5. Saving energy for future stages

6. Being reasonable (probably my favorite reason)

Lets not forget, after all, we PAY to do these races. While it is true that most pros also get paid to do the races by the team they ride for, it still is interesting that when it comes down to it, our team pays an entry fee for stages like this. So riders can fall off the pace and ride together in the interest of RECOVERY for 6 and a half hours.

Annnnyways. I hate the grupetto. Since I have some disease that prevents me from doing reason #5, I often end up there because I am some combination of the other ones, aside from #6, and that sucks. Thankfully an old teammate and friend Jon Murphy came up to me with 2 hours to go and recommended we tell each other drinking stories to see how long we could go without checking how long we still had to go. This was a good tactic. 

Near the end of the day a German rider comes up to the whole group yelling "Ve hav to RIDE, i spoke with the COMissare, Z time cut is NEIGH!" (This is an accurate impression, totally not offensive) This German rider was incorrect. Time cut was 20%. I asked him "What is 20% of 1 hour?" to which he yelled (spoke normally?) "I ASKED Z COM, VE HAV TO RIDE" Which is the wrong answer. The right answer is 12 minutes. It is easy to assume then, using math, that time cut was going to be 6x12 minutes, which is 72 minutes, which means we could have all stopped at a market, bought feathered and roasted a chicken, and been on our way with chicken snacks and STILL HAD 20 MINUTES TO SPARE. Whatever. That guy wrecked my easy day a little, and for that I despised him and will make fun of him mercilessly for the rest of my life.

Since not a lot happened today, lets take a second to review a few more of the finer moments of being in China!

Hotel Accouterments: 1 Toothbrush. 2 Condoms.

Fancy Power Strip

Only have to eat this 9 more mornings!!!!

China Day 5-8: Dark Times

Ceremonial Beheading of the, um, horned animal thing

I write this on Day 8, after sinking into a pit of despair deeper than I have experienced in some time. I have a total of 5 pictures from the last 4 days because I spent most of it being angry at everything I saw, touched, heard, smelled, and even tasted… especially tasted. So damn sick of rice. I like reading my post from Day 4, what a great mood I was in! During the Dark Times, however, I wrote emails entitled “Cuck Fhina” to Annie, an excerpt:

Never come to China. Mark it off your list of places to visit. I think I just saw a dead yak in someone's driveway. Don't clean that up, it's fine… (going to go ahead and delete the rest of this paragraph of hatred)

When I get home I'm going to buy 1000 big Macs and hand them out to people and tell them to cherish their freedom, thank them for abiding by unwritten social norms, tell them to calm down the communism rhetoric because that ain't funny, and look at their car and say "hey, at least it's not a coal powered buggy, those are tough to insure." Enjoy your America sandwich and ability to breathe the air without a face mask.

Safe to say I was losing it a little. Ok, a lot. Why?

Day 5 (Stage 2): I DIDN’T MEAN TO GET IN THE BREAK I SWEAR

Zach's Instagram was on point during my dark times.

This is the truth. It was one of those, “eh, ill follow this move” and then the group takes a pee break and you and 2 other poor SOBs get 6 minutes on the field 20k into the stage. PERK: The first 60k of this race was lined 100% with people. It was surreal. I don’t know how to do that math, but if you have a 120k (73 mile) long line of people (both sides of the road) sometimes with up to 10 people deep, you have a lot of people taking pictures of you. Riding your bike through something like that is like a perpetual noise tunnel. Its amazing. I will not forget the first 60k of that race at all.

Then it was to the circuits. 3 laps of 42k. Terrible pavement. BUT, after 1 lap, we still had 5 minutes. On the second lap, with 60k to go, the field went hard up the hill (the circuit was essentially a hot-dog up and down a valley) and the gap went down to 3:30, which is when one of the break members crashed out. We got word he was chasing so we waited, and by the time he caught back on and we got back to work, the gap was down to 2 minutes and our chances were null. Total shame, I could see a scenario where we would have had 3 minutes going into the last lap and with the hill on the course I might have had a chance. Instead, someone attacked across the gap, I went with and it was the two of us with 1 minute at the top of the valley with 20k to go, and we were absorbed with 7k to go. I was pretty devastated. I put a lot of effort into that move and came up with nothing. It left a sour taste in my mouth, which was exacerbated by the actual taste of whatever is on the road in that valley…

Day 6 (Stage 3): Yak River

Drying clothing after a brutal day on the bike

The 3^rd stage featured a 50k climb up to 10000 feet, where we would stay while making our way to the actual Qinghai Lake. It was not a hard climb, but it was raining and cold, so it was a hard mental day. With all the clothing I brought I started the climb feeling surprisingly good considering the effort the day before and being soaked to the bone. It was actually a welcome effort as we were all freezing and could use some warmth. So there we are, minding our business about mid pack, and a Chinese rider decided he needed to be in front of me, Dave, and Jon, like yesterday. I was on the ground before I even knew I was getting crashed. Dave and Jon both were very hurt, my bike was in need of a wheel, bar adjustment, and to put my levers back in the right spots. All in all, with 3 of us down, it took our team car a bit to get to me, replace the wheel, fix the bars and shifters, and get me on my way. Jon and Dave were both looking like their race was over, so I set off about 5 minutes down at the base of the climb in the rain on my own. Typically, a commissar would turn his head to a rocket bottle to help a crashed rider get back to the field, but when Gus got to me, he told me Jon had already been disqualified for taking a rocket bottle from him, and the draft on the car was minimal on the climb, so he gave me some food and I chased for an hour and a half before I caught a group of guys at the top of the climb who were about a minute back on the lead group. We hit the top of the climb and my group was so unmotivated to ride that we never saw the leaders again, and it was a slow cold 100k to the finish bleeding and bummed.

That night I felt feverish and was pretty banged up on the right side. I dressed all the wounds and got some sleep, crashing sucks, I was pissed off, and I knew the hardest days of the race were still to come. Why do I call it Yak River? Well:

Day 7 (Stage 4): Why you no let me race?

An early Category 2 climb on the stage split the field into a front group of 30, which I made, which then spent about a half hour attacking itself to death until 8 riders got away. I mustered up my anger and sprinted as hard as I could and made it across to the group. Typically after such a big to-do, when the break goes, it goes to the line. Today? Nope. Astana missed it, and chased it down, because FU Jim and break friends! The stage was a field sprint. I started to feel incredibly tired and angry during the stage.

That night I was running a high fever, coughing up yellow and green, felt like puking, and my leg was throbbing. It was clearly infected, and since I saw a dead yak on the road, I figured the river I crashed into after skipping off the road the day before was full of dead yak. Henceforth my infection was referred to as “the dead yak in my hip.”

I emailed Annie that night that I was 90% sure I wouldn’t start the next stage. I felt horrible, and my mood reflected it. I was impossible to be around. Dave was sharing a room with me, already out of the race with suspected broken ribs, but I bet I was winning the pity party by about a mile. Or 1.61 kilometers, depending on who you is.

A small crowd gathers to see Sam mostly naked and bleeding

Day 8 (Stage 5): We rode all the way to Utah?!

Red Bull Anyone?

After much stubbornness and complaining, I took some antibiotics, a ton of ibuprofen, two 5-hour energy shots, and mustered up a stage 4 start. It started with a HC climb that topped out at 7k into the stage, and if Drapac, UHC, and Kolss would not have neutralized the first 5k of it, I might have never seen the field again, but to my beer owing pleasure, with some chasing on the descent, I was in the peloton and in the race, despite the odds I had set for myself the night before. BACK TO IT!

Half way into the stage there was still no break established, just another day of status quo racing in China. So I started to participate after my teammates had throttled themselves going with every move of the day. In pure Tour of Qinghai Lake fashion, something crazy and unexpected happened! I got away with our GC rider Chad Beyer, a guy from La Pomme, Astana, and the yellow jersey from Kolss. I pull off the front after the attacks and see we have a gap and that Chad is with me, right then, the Yellow Jersey passes me and I point at him incredulous and look at Chad with a “what the hell is going on in this race” look.

The Yellow Jersey?!

Chad goes "Its all you man." I put my head down

The race situation, Yellow jersey 26 seconds back, field 3:20 back.

The 3 guys with Chad and I take each other off the back, probably because the Yellow Jersey was in the break and that's crazy, so Chad and I were left on our own, that group of three 26 seconds behind us, and us 3:20 up on the field. It is at this time I flick Chad through and hear “nope, its all you man!” I immediately understood the tactic. There was a HUGE climb coming up, and I was to ride as hard as I could to the base of it and give Chad the best head start that I could. So I did. Infection and all. I sang songs in my head like I do in training, and sure enough, an hour later, pulled the plug at the base of the climb with Chad 3 minutes up on the field. He ended up getting caught, but it was worth a try. I spent the next 2.5 hours on my own, eons ahead of the grupetto, and eons behind the lead group. It was a 50k descent into the finish town, which was down a valley that looked like Southern Utah, hoodoos and all. It gave me time to think, ride easy, and talk myself into the rest of the race. I crossed the line only a minute ahead of the grupetto, but the time alone pedaling easy was so valuable to me. I think it reset my head for the rest of the race. I would call it the end of the dark times. I apologized to my team for being so difficult to deal with, and they kindly dismissed it as reasonable considering the circumstances, but watching Mike Woods deal with his crash over the last 4 days (I write this the evening before the last stage of the race) I am seeing that I lack grace in the face of adversity.