This year’s Tour of Utah should be the best yet, with 6 stages and contenders including David Zabriskie, Floyd Landis and Tour veterans Oscar Sevilla and Francisco Mancebo.  As part of the pro racing, there are some events that are open to amateur racers.  One is the 1000 Warriors, a USA Cycling certified race, where over 600 racers will compete in stage 4, which starts in Park City Utah and has a hill top finish at Snowbird ski resort.   Riding in the event will be guest wounded warriors, purple heart recipients from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

I did a similar event last year with nearly the same course.  This year John will be flying in from Atlanta to join.  Here is the best current estimate for both myself and John to reach each point.  My estimate is based on doing the same as last year and as confirmed by recent training rides where I completed the entire course on two different days.  Since John will be starting 35 minutes before I do and will be riding faster, the gap between when we arrive at the SAG stops will increase.  Anne may not have time between after I arrive at the last hand off to drive to Snowbird and park before John finishes.  For this day, civil twilight is 6:15 am and sunrise at 6:44 am.  Last year I started at 5:53 am and it was dark.  That made it a bit spooky on the first descent where I reached speeds of 41 mph.

This shows the elevation profile. The steepest grade is 9% but you can see that the Snowbird climb is at around 9% for several miles (click graph to enlarge).

Here is the race route. The pros start at 11 am will finish around 3 pm.

Categories: Cycling Racing, Warrirors Race TofU
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