I did the sportive rather than the race, didn't want my first 200+ mile ride at altitude to be a race. I'm late posting due to travel and work. I tried to post Monday night when I got home - actually, it was about 1:30 Tuesday morning - and it was so incoherent and so hard to write I just deleted it.
I was in the geezer squad (M60+/65+). We started out at a decent pace with about 32 people in the paceline. As so often happens, fewer than half of us pulled, but we still made it to Preston in about 1:30. The paceline disintegrated there as some guys stopped at the feedzone and others (like me) didn't. From there to the top of Emigration there was no cohesion, I just rode my pace and surprisingly passed a s**tload of people. Partway up that climb a couple of guys touched wheels and went down; I was about four wheels back and managed to avoid the pileup. I passed the second feedzone and hit the third one at Montpelier, reloaded and kept going. As @
Ttoc6 noted, the second climb was NBD. The third one was another case of riding my pace and passing people, though nowhere near as many as before. The sun finally came out on the way up that climb, the local folks were hurting due to the relatively high humidity but to me, it was just like home.
I reloaded at that feedzone and started the descent and karma hit me - it started raining, not the warm Louisiana rain I'm used to but rather a cold-ass mountain rain while doing 43-44 mph. It was a mite brisk.
From there to Afton I felt great. My coach was at the feedzone there and I told her that while I got my food and drink. I got into what I thought was a decent paceline and was cruising, worked my way to the front, took my pull and came off to drift back about ten people when I found that we had dropped most of the paceline and it was just me a couple of young guys. I stayed with them for a while and then drifted off.
That's when the "don't want nuttin' sweet" thing hit me. The last thing I wanted was more sports drink - but I drank it anyway - and more Clif bar, which I didn't touch. I quickly went from feeling pretty good to feeling pretty lousy. My legs were okay; my stomach, not so much. I hit the feedzone at Alpine and my coach took one look at me and knew what was going on. She had made a turkey and cheese sandwich and I ate half and filled my bottles with water. I stopped in the porta-potty and didn't want to get up, lost at least ten minutes there. Got back on the road and the sandwich and water started to take effect and pulled me out of that tailspin. Riding along the Snake River with a strong tailwind didn't hurt, either. I stopped at the last feedzone for more water and brought it on in. I actually felt better at the end than at the 150 mile point.
I ended up 5/22 finishers (10 DNS/DNF) with a chip time of 12:05, with about 55 minutes of that stopped at feedzones. My time would've put me 10/13 in the M65+ race (the guy who won the M65+ race did it in 9:46!). Had I not had that ten-minute bad spell I would've moved up a couple of places. I'm...satisfied with that, at least for a first try. It took this sea-level flatlander a lot of work to get to that level. I started this thinking that it would be a one-and-done thing, now I'm thinking about how I could shave time off.