Going to bed at midnight and being wide awake at 4:30 left a mark. The melatonin and ear plugs weren’t able to overcome my internal clock that is set to get up at 5:30 Mountain Time. I tried to rest until the 6:00 alarm went off, but I was too amped. I wanted to get going!

I stayed up late the night before feeding SD cards into my laptop, importing images, delivering jpegs to clients, cleaning lenses, and charging batteries. There is a lot of maintenance to do when you are going out for back-to-back-to-back very full days.

Today started out cold and foggy, and stayed that way well into the afternoon. It turned out to be perfect racing conditions, and the fog added a neat element to the photos.

I would be covering Jason’s race on the circuit course in the morning, then focusing on the road races in the afternoon. The circuit course was entirely on the racetrack, and almost made me wish I was racing insted of taking photos. It looked like fun! In a slightly scary and painful kind of way…

The track had some good elevation gain, followed by a bomber descent down the world-famous corkscrew feature. Hold on tight!

After the circuit race I hopped in the car and traveled out to the far end of the road course to catch the women’s P/1/2 race and some of the Team Novo Nordisk riders. The race maps were lacking in detail, and I made a few errors trying to get to the right spot. Thankfully I made it in time, and I loved being out away from the crowds for a while.

For some reason I pictured the road course in my head as a barren wasteland. It was lush and green, with lots of tree cover and small winding roads. It was nice!

Geoff and Karl were slated to ride the road race for Team Razik in the late afternoon, and they held up their end of the bargain yet again by providing several great photo-ops.

It was another great day. I was working hard and loving it.