Levi Leipheimer's King Ridge GranFondo: There's A Reason The Server Was Slammed

My number from last year's GranFondo.

In September of 2010, a friend convinced me to sign up for Levi's GranFondo (which my wife affectionately calls The Grand Fondu).  Tickets had sold out long ago so we had to scrample to pick up tickets from people who had pre-purchased the tickets but were not able to attend. 

GranFondo Crowd. This is a very popular (and fun!) event.

The scramble didn't end there.  While I had been training 6 days a week, I had only been riding about 28-35 miles per ride.  Having spent about five years living in Santa Rosa, I knew I had my work cut out for me to get ready in time. 

Doing the ride was awesome!  I always loved riding out there and really missed it.  Getting back out in all of the familiar roads, taking in the scenery, and enjoying the never-ending stream of riders (there were something like 5000 that year) was the most enjoyable ride I had ever done. 

Registration for the 2011 Fondo was opening this past Monday at 9am.  I kept debating whether to sign up again.  I really wanted to go back, but with this years race focus, I wasn't sure if I should do it or not.  At the last minute, I decided that I should go back. 

Bad iPhone pic of me at the event.

At 9 am sharp, I tried to register.  50 minutes later I was still trying to register, but their website kept barfing.  Eventually the host company pulled down the entire site thinking that they were trying to be hacked (despite warnings from the Fondo camp that they were going to have a high volume of traffic at 9).  I had to get back to work and go to a meeting.  I left not knowing if the site was going to be up again or if, the site went back up, it would fill before I could register.  After the meeting I saw a notice on facebook saying that they closed down the registration and were going to try again at 4pm.  I wasn't able to get back to registration at 4, but I was able to try around 5.  Still no luck.  I check facebook again and find out that their backup plan wasn't able to handle the traffic either and were going to try again Tuesday at noon.  Argh...  Finally, thanks to an assist from my wife who was able to be at the computer at noon, I was able to register. 

We are all eagerly awaiting the start.

Up until we finally registered, I wasn't sure if I had made the right decision.  With each delay I was thinking that maybe I should just skip it this year.  After the registration, I was happy we did.  I can't wait to get back out there and see what I can do with a race season under my belt.