Part two:
After the feed zone was a long descent and I was alone but I saw a group of 3? ahead to try to catch. I am not a great super-fast descender so the progress was slow and here were a lot of big RVs and trailers on the road that I was nervous to squeeze by. While passing one particularly large truck with a trailer, another rider pops up to my left. I get on his wheel and we do 20-30 second rotations until we catch the other group. I was hoping for at least a little bit of rest but they were rotating continuosly so we integrated immediately. Eventually we settled into a pretty good rythmn, but after a while the pace and the wind took its toll on the guy (JAX) that helped me chase and be blew out the back. Some of us tried to slow and wait for him, but the PAA guy in our group would accelerate every time he came up and the JAX guy wasn't able to catch back on. Later the rider wearing "Tequila Solo" fell off, and I can see from the pictures that he eventually latched on to the group with Jon (WhiteCarbonDude) and John (JPConrad) chasing behind.
Just outside of Shoshone, we could see the riders and the vehciles of the next group about 2 minutes ahead, and it gave us something to chase and work for. We were closing the gap but it was very slow progress. When we were finally nearly caught up, we were joined by another rider just finishing his nature break. He had been in the group ahead and saw us coming and figured it was his chance to stop and still be able to join back up. He also told us that there was a group of 6 further up the road. That group wasn't working particularly hard--they weren't formed up in lines or rotating, they were just kinda plugging along. I spoke to a rider from PAA and he said they had a teammate up the road in the break so they weren't going to chase. We were about 15 miles from the finish, and I knew I wouldn't be able to chase the lead group down, but I didn't want to get caught by the riders already behind us so I spent a bit of time at the front trying to keep the pace up.
About 5 miles out nobody wanted to work so I went off the front with one of the guys (Bicycle John's) I was chasing with earlier, but when it was clear they were just going to let us dangle a little bit in front we backed off and reintegrated. That brought the pace back up anyway, so it served its purpose. About 2 miles out we could see the tent for the finish. It was slightly downhill and the pace started to pick up. Suddenly it was clear that the finish line was a lot closer than we had thought and we were headed full steam for it. One guy took off a little early, and I followed (also too early), and I got to 30 mph (remember this is into the wind and only very slightly downhill) but watched several others fly by me rocking their bikes all over the road. So the lead group had 6 riders, and looking at the pictures I probably came in 6th of the chase group, for 12th overall. I know that all the guys ahead of me in my group were cat 4, and at least 2 of the lead group were cat 4, so at worst I got 5th in cat 5, but it seems likely that I won.
I can see from the pictures two guys went over the centerline in the sprint; I wonder if they will catch that on the video? I don't think I care enough to "report" it. I've been replaying the sprint in my mind and although I did start early, I don't know how much difference it would have made, since I didn't lose any speed, and was actually still accelerating when I hit the line. I just don't have that explosive speed that you need in those situations; I need time to get up to speed.
After the race I had a drink (thanks John for the Mocha Frappuccino), changed, and cleaned up. Fortunately I knew from experience to bring a change of clothes. Jon and his friends didn't think to do that, so they had to sit in their bibs for the drive back to Baker.