On a smoky, hazy night, ten of us gathered in the center of Pelham to tackle tonight's hillclimb. Ryan likened the atmosphere to a smoker's lounge, and with all the haze from the Canadian wildfires, it almost felt that way.

Given the poor air quality, we made a consensus decision to just ride easy up the hill, and then have a sprint finish at the top.

Just kidding. Instead, Shawn decided to launch an attack right off the starting line, and opened up a big gap on the group. Which suprised me, because normally Ryan would chase down an attack like that, but he had a lot of trouble clipping in, and was still pedaling with one leg about thirty seconds into the race. Which surprised me, because normally Andy is the one who has trouble clipping in, but he seemed to do OK with it tonight.

Anyway, Ryan eventually managed to get his pedals straightened out (I guess -- or maybe he just rode the whole thing with one leg), and disappeared up the road ahead of me. Most of the rest of the group managed to catch Shawn on the early part of the climb, only to have him go rocketing by again on the flatter middle section. There were some close finishes up near the front of the group, but I didn't see any of it, as I was trying to cling to Melissa's wheel and failing to come around past her at the finish.

We crossed paths with Andy R near the bottom of the hill, he must have just missed the start, and rode up solo, which is always challenging. Tim also did a solo run earlier in the day, hopefully the air quality was better for him.

Garret had the night's only PR, by eight seconds. Sam remains in the lead in the men's hillclimb series, while Melissa clings to a narrow lead over Madeline on the women's side. In the overall series, Andy remains on top of the men's standings, and it's Madeline who is just slightly ahead of Melissa for the women.

Tonight's results:

Full series results are available here.