As it happened -- in pictographs!

It began like this:








Then, a few short months later, here's how it went down...

Neil building the new babies at Baum HQ:










All is quiet in camp on the Friday night.




Ryan winds it out towards the end of a lap.


This is the good stuff.


Yours truly.


Neil demonstrates the real-man's guide to race nutrition:

Carbo Cake loading.


Hydration.


Midnight tweaking (ok, more like 3 am tweaking).


The mid-morning mellow, this is where the crush of fatigue sets in, just before the last ditch GU and Red Bull caffeine charging and panic fires everything up before the finish. (I like how the odd shadow here make it look like Mr Hsu is wearing a man-bra.)




Jim, the happy bicycle man! "Riding bicycles is FUN!"


Mr Hsu teaches Neil how to perform "bike-fu" on nasty singletrack blockers who bring dishonour on your family.


Ryan cranks it in like a demon.


We missed third by how much?



The obligatory team shot. A huge thanks to Volvo for the use of a ridiculously sweet XC90. Whatever Swedish majik is welded into that thing works; we're all home alive after all.


Feebs and I had no such luxury.



But we did get a pretty wicked sunset.