A pleasant chat with night crew mechanic Joe Murphy says that all is well. They went through some more heavily trafficked sections on the road into TS 32, Camdenton, MO, which was sort of a distraction, but not necessarily a good one. You can see the area on My Athlete. It is the section through the Lake of the Ozarks, which had a lot of summer vacation traffic. Also, Joe says that this is sort of a rolling section with some shorter, steeper climbs.
Looking at the elevation profiles for the next few time stations, this looks like the norm for the next 150 miles until he gets close to the Mississippi River, where it will head downhill, flatten out at the river and then start the rollers all over again as he moves east, away from the river into Illinois and Indiana.
At this point, Rob is about 175 miles from the Mississippi River time station. Depending on what happens tonight, he should arrive there tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon, between noon and 4:00 PM. As an FYI, the Mississippi is the second cutoff in the race (the first was Durango.) Any racer that is not there by Thursday at 3:00 PM will be a DNF. Obviously, this is not a concern for Rob.
At that point he will have less than 1,000 miles to go, though the terrain east of the river is not to be taken lightly. Yes, the mammoth climbs of the Rockies are a distant memory, but these are the same legs that had to go up those climbs. Tack on another 1,000 miles of racing between there and here and you get the picture.
But Rob just keeps riding along and who knows what fireworks he has planned for the last few hundred miles.
Here's to a good night's sleep for all of us tonight, and lots of miles for Rob.
Hasta mañana.
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