Some San Fran fixie masters cruising around Austin, TX with the city’s most famous cyclist…the guy in the white t-shirt. I love watching Lance trying to skid at the end.
Lance Armstrong
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Rob tags Sari for the next lap
Yesterday marked a first for the Anderson family: Ian and Sari actually raced together.
Typically, I’m far too slow for Sari to race on a team with me, but the format at the inaugural 12 Hours of Snowmass was perfect for us. It allowed us to all race at our own pace and switch off laps (and babysitting duty). We teamed up with our buddy Rob Russell and entered the Co-Ed Trio category. Just for fun, we all raced on our singlespeeds.
We had a great day of racing. It was a terrific 7-mile course that featured over 1,500 feet of climbing and lots of fun, technical singletrack. The weather was spectacular with a hint of fall in the breeze and even a some golden aspen leaves covering the trail.
Our team name was “Chicked,” a term guys use when they’re getting beat by a girl. Sari didn’t disappoint and clocked the both the fastest lap on our team at 47 minutes, as well as the fastest overall female lap for the day, netting her a nice cash prize and a sweet tent from Ground.
Potato chips!
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In between laps we all traded off duties watching Juniper, with support from Rob’s wife Elinor. Juniper was a champ, ringing the cowbell for us and eating lots of our race junk food.
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Our team placed first in the Co-ed Trio Division, finishing a total of 14 laps (5 for Ian and Rob, 4 for Sari).
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Juniper steals the spotlight on the podium
Oh yeah, there was also this guy by the name of Lance at the race. I had a nice conversation with him on the course. It went something like this:
Lance: Rider UP!
Ian: (gasp) How’s it going? (gasp)
Lance: Passing on your RIGHT!
Ian: (gasp) So, I hear you’re training for the Tour de France again? Don’t you think races like this are more fun? Hey, my wife is an adventure racer, and she’s sponsored by Nike too! You guys should totally do an adventure race together.
Lance: (now 5o yards in front of Ian) grunt.
Ian: Go get em Lance, you da’ man!
Anyway, my colleague and friend Len Zanni, along with his teammates Lance Armstrong and Max Taam held off a late race surge by Team Beaver Creek to win the trio men’s category. Full recap here.
My favorite part of the day was when Sari showed up at the race after letting Juniper sleep in, and almost killed Lance. Sari was in a hurry, head down, pushing Juniper up the hill in the Chariot. Lance was doing some warm up in the grass and very nearly collided with Sari, Juniper and the Chariot. In a move that was eerily reminiscent of Stage 9 of the 2003 Tour de France, Lance narrowly avoided Sari, et. all.
Lance warming up, trying to avoid Sari.
Len and Lance on the podium
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This weekend Ian and I have entered in a nice little local race with our buddy Rob, the inaugural 12 Hours of Snowmass. We’re all going to be on singlespeeds and while we’re planning to race hard, we were thinking it was going to be really laid back and casual.
Then Lance Armstrong went and messed it all up.
Lance with Lenny close behind at Wed's local race.
On Tuesday, Lance announced he is coming out of retirement to win #8 next summer at the Tour de France.
On Wednesday, Lance showed up and raced at our final Aspen local series race. Recap here.
And then today our buddy Nat Ross announced Lance will be racing at the 12 Hours of Snowmass this weekend.
Lance will be racing on a 3-person team with Ian’s colleague Len Zanni and local phenom Max Taam. These three should have been a shoe-in for the win, but then my Team Nike teammate Mike Kloser caught wind of it (courtesy of quick call from local DJ and instigator Steve Leigh).
Twenty minutes later, Kloser had his own team for the Snowmass race: Dave Weins, who beat Lance at the Leadville 100 in August, and Jay Henry, who is a perennial winner at the Mountain States Cup and sometimes races with Team Nike.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple other pro teams enter at the last minute as well.
Unfortunately for Ian, Rob and I, we have to compete in the same category as these hammers. We have no hope of keeping them in sight, but we will have a front row seat for the Battle Royale. Look for an update early next week about how it all pans out.
VeloNews story here.
SariAnderson.com 
