With everyone getting tired, and all the hills, today found us all over the route. But surprisingly we all meet up in Harbor Springs and had some food and finished the last 50 miles semi together. Robyn and I even had the chance to meet at Harbor Springs and ride the final trip around the lake shore to Mac City together. That was a nice treat!

The ride behind me, I feel pretty good. With being dropped last year a few times through out the trip, one of my main goals this year was to not get dropped. Even through I got slightly dropped on day 3 after bunker hill, I was never more then a minute or two behind the group as they pulled into town for lunch. Added to that, I played a pretty big role with the group as a worker bee with intersections and helping when I could at the front and such. So with 3 sub-5-hour centuries in a row, I feel that was a pretty successful DALMAC. Next year I'll work more on those hills to improve today's 18.9 avg day.

The bus ride home was a slow, tiring 4 hour event that I'm glad is over. I'm sure to can tell in today's report, but I'm pretty tired and ready to hit the sack. I'll fill in the details and post pictures and elevation profiles when I get back from vacation. Also, I think most of the people I rode with will be sending in their thoughts via e-mails so I'll post those as well. Night... night...

Post Ride comments: I'll fill more details about some of the climbs of the forth day. As you can see most of the climbing happened in the first 50 or so miles of the day. I few slight climbs around 60 and 80 miles, but those are pretty hidden as false flats and such. The majority of the climbing starts right at mile 2 with the climb over the ridge and decent into Central lake. For the most part this quarter mile climb is about 5 to 9% grade and slightly slow. But the killer is that it's on mile 2 of the 4th century. Legs are tight and back-sides are sore. The decent on the other side is the fastest of the day at the top with a 18 to 19% grade the first 10 to 20 feet. I think I hit 46mph on that one.

The Wall was the great but shorter then I imagined in my mind. I've zoomed in and have a pretty good elevation profile of just the wall for those that might be geeked to view it. For the most part the grade is pretty slight leading up to the steepest part. I think it's between 2 to 5% but as soon as it goes skyward the grade shoots up to about 17 and 18% for about 10 to 20 feet. Again, nothing amazingly high, steep, or long but you have to imagine it after already doing about 321 miles. Judging from what I've seen in the Madison area, it's closest equal would be about half of that first climb on the Blue Mounds course.

The rest of the first part of the climbing is pretty pale after the Wall. Because of road conditions our group elected not to do the seven sisters so the 4,881 feet that I climbed that day did not include those hills. I've pulled the profile of the seven sisters as well as the figuring out the additional feet climbed if you went that direction (247 feet).

All said and done the total feet climbed for DALMAC is around 15,000 feet.

Robyn:
The day started early indeed, as everyone in camp was looking forward to hitting the road and getting on their way to Mackinaw City. By about 7:20, I had headed out for the day. I felt a bit slow...or perhaps that was just due to the multi-mile gradual hill on the way out from the camp... indeed, this was the day for hills. Steep ones, gradual climbs, short ones, long ones - it was great. I decided to try my hand at "The Wall", and scaled it with (thankfully) not too much problem. It ended up being shorter than I had expected, though it was indeed steep at the end - but not for too long. I also did the "Seven Sisters" series of roller hills, which were a lot of fun. My maximum speed on a downhill was somewhere around 40 mph, about as fast as I've ever experienced.

As Clint mentioned, I ended up meeting up with the gang and we rode together for a few miles. At least, I held on as long as I could to the 23 mph paceline...whew!! I dropped back for a while, we met up at another stop down the line, and then headed on down the road. We met up again about 7 mph or so outside of Mackinaw City, and road in together, drinking in the sights of the bridge in the distance.

The hour draws late, and I'll have to add more details later, but to summarize: it was a fantastic tour. My goal was simply to finish and to enjoy the experience, and both goals were well met. Both Clint and I were fortunate to not experience injury or accident, and mechanical problems were minimal. The scenery was beautiful, and the weather was as perfect as one could possibly hope for. So, until later, see you on the road!