Impressive Finish

This is Ginet, not Zach. Apparently I'm not cool enough to be an invited contributor to this blog. Is it because I don't ride? Or my split times are too slow? Or I don't wear enough spandex? What does a girl have to do to get an invite around here? I do some pretty mean step aerobics is that good enough?

Anyway, I had to hijack Zach's account to give him some props. He finished third in a pretty tough race this weekend...on a broken bike! Here's a write up a fellow teammate wrote about him on their cycling club blog:

"The real story of this race was the phenomenal effort and determination of Zach Owen. Zach had a cable failure to his rear derailer before the start of the race which locked his rear cog in the 11-tooth position. He was able to shift the front cog between the 39 and 53 tooth position but only needed the 39 for the "wall". The rest of the time, he was cruising in the 53/11. This guy is a stud! The race started quickly and spread the field out a bit so that we were able to maneuver into the front. Aaron and Dave gave us some pre-race intel about the nature of the ride and suggested we stay within the top 10. Occasionally we were rotated to the front for short quick pulls to appease the peeps around us but we stayed smart and didn't press the pace too much on the way out. At the turnaround there was some shuffling and a couple of people went down while trying to cut it too close to the cone. There were many surges on the way back and one of the junior riders lost his concentration and wobbled into a few of the riders around us, but everyone recovered and complained loudly. It was nice to ride with teammate Zach as long as I could, and we were able to cover and maintain contact with the main group to the base of Zaca (that was my main goal for this race!). I hung on going over the top, but Zach was already gone with the leaders. I had to chase and ride hard to bridge the gap to the main group and worked with a guy named Doug to reestablish our position. Unfortunately, there was a major crash about 3/4 of a mile from the finish. The peleton had to be careful as we passed by while the paramedics tended to the victims. Once we were clear of the accident, the leaders were gone and the acceleration was on to the finish. Zach rode very intelligently and secured a seemingly easy third place, bicycle issues and all!"

A snap shot at the start of the race:

Way to represent, Zach!