El Tour de Tucson

Well, I am still here and still pregnant.  While we wait for baby girl to arrive, here are some fun photos from the weekend before Thanksgiving, when JP and his Mom did the El Tour de Tucson bike race.  This is a huge annual event in Tucson--more hype during the week leading up to the Saturday race than the UA-ASU game the same weekend.  There are courses of 111, 60, and 42 miles, and JP and Mary did the 60 mile one.

Here they are in our backyard ready to head to the course:

With their officially labeled bikes and all...

The start line for the 60 mile course was just a mile or two from our house, so they rode over while JP"s little brother Patrick and I drove to meet them and check out the start.  There were almost 9000 racers total, but the 60 mile start was supposed to be smaller. It still looked pretty impressive when we arrived:

We found JP and Mary back in the line. From where they were lined up, here is the view towards the start:

There were a ton of people! And lots of fancy bikes!  It took a while for them to move up to the start in the crowd, but luckily the timing system is all electronic. Here they are moving forward (you can see JP's green shirt in the middle left of the picture):

Once they crossed the start, the pack thinned out considerably and they were off!  Patrick and I went back to the house and met up with them at the finish about 4 hours later:

They both said they had fun and were fairly happy with their times. It was a gorgeous day in Tucson and we were proud of them!