Reload

The 4:40 Rider Progress posting had a lot of errors. Please re-load the page to make sure you get the 11-Sep-2009 04:50 (or later) version.

Most of the riders have themselves reloaded on sleep and food and are between Atwood and Byers (no arrivals there yet). The main bunch left Atwood around 3:00 AM. The bunch is led out by John Lee Ellis, the Florida trio of Hamid Akbarian and tandem team Alain Abbate & Viktoriya Shundrovskaya, and 5 more. These 9 riders are on their 3rd consecutive day of 3:00 AM starts. What a life!

The early start was perhaps spurred on by forecasts of higher cross winds later today. "Breezy, with a north northwest wind between 13 and 20 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph." The winds typically are less severe west of Byers so the sooner you get there the better.

We are happy to see Paul Shapiro check into (and out of) Atwood as we missed him in Kensington. But all is well and he is right there in the bunch.

And we are breathing a deep sigh of relief to see John Lee having a great ride after asthma knocked him out of this year's Gold Rush Randonnee.

Only 5 riders are left in Atwood, but they are still in great position with 3.5 left before that control closes.