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We started out into a headwind. I was suffering alone until Ragan came along. He pulled me into the first rest stop. My chest felt like I had been punched, I'm guessing it was from the day before when my heart felt like it was going to pound its way out of my chest on the climb. From there we took a bike trail Into Ridgway, then jumped on 550 South again. We had gentle climbing to Ouray, but the big stuff started at the far edge of town. Lon was situated a couple miles up the climb with the support van. Karl had a flat but went through a couple tubes trying to fix it.
The climb was beautiful, but also a bit scary. There was no guard rail at all. In several places, if there was a shoulder it was very small. Looking over the edge you can see a thousand or two thousand foot drop to a creek down below. I got dizzy just looking. It was a long climb topping out at 11,018 feet. So yes, I had trouble breathing and yes I was one of the last people over. We had a fast descent into lunch, but then more climbing to Molas pass, which topped out at 10,910 feet. We dropped 1000 feet, but then had to make that up in 3 miles to get through Coal Bank Pass which I believe topped out at 10,600.
Barb was waiting there to support us. She said the front group got rained on, but I hadn't seen any rain. We had around 35 miles to go to get to the hotel. Luckily it was mostly downhill and there was a little tailwind. Bikeroutetoaster.com says there was 8400 feet of climbing over 112 miles. My time was around 9 hours in the saddle (my computer wigged out at about 85 miles) so that's a guesstimate.