Tour of California, Stage 3

I won't blame you if you haven't heard of it, but the Tour of California is the biggest bike racing event in the USA, and yesterday it rolled through our backyard, basically!  This year the Stage 3 route took them through the hills just west of where I work, and Alex and I took a long lunch break to ride out and watch the race go by.  I had never seen a major bike race in person, and while it all blew by incredibly quickly, it was really pretty cool to experience all the excitement and activity - lots of hardcore biker fans braving the cold rain and mist lining the sides of the road in the forest, dozens of police and official vehicles clearing the route ahead of time, the cowbells cheering on the lead group of racers, the 100-strong peloton churning after them up a "King of the Mountain" stretch, and even the wet ride back to the valley with all the other people that had the same idea as us.  Most of the major names in cycling (that you'll also see in the Tour de France, for example) were here, and I'm sure I was about 3 feet from Lance Armstrong at some point, I just couldn't tell which extremely fit white guy with wraparound sunglasses, a helmet, and skin-tight RadioShack jersey he was out of 5 or so.  I even had some freebie bags of Jelly Bellys tossed to me from the team car as I cheered them on!  Alex took a couple pictures, and there's some other representative ones from our vantage point below.

Here's the peloton, led by Team RadioShack, heading through the hills

Here's me waiting in the drizzle on the La Honda uphill

Here comes the throng of racers blasting through...

... followed closely by the throng of support cars that were inches apart (from each other and from the riders they were busy handing Gu, Cliff Bars, and water bottles to) while winding up the narrow mountain roads.  Yikes.

And here's a video Alex took of the lead group going by.  These guys finished the day in Santa Cruz having averaged an insane 23 mph over 113 miles, including 4 major hills.  They'll keep riding for the next week (eight stages total), ending down in LA.  I'll definitely head back to see this again next year!