And then I walked some more….
out of the changing tent to pick up my bike.
What’s up, bike?
My bike and I have a love/hate relationship. I was hoping I could get more love than hate on this particular day. We started off on good terms – until I realized my speed wasn’t registering on my bike computer. I made it a couple hundred yards down the road and pulled over to check things out. A random man ran up and asked me if I was ok and if my bike was working properly. I told him no worries, just that the magnet on my back wheel had fallen off so I would have no idea what speed I was going throughout my ride. I told him that this was probably going to bother me and he said, “don’t let it bother you, you can do this!” Yeah, it bothered me. Luckily I had my garmin set up that it would tell me the distance I had traveled, so I could sort of guesstimate what my average pace was…but I am used to pacing myself at any given moment by looking at my speed. Not having this info at my fingertips was not good. Obviously I survived without it, but it wasn’t pretty!
I felt awesome during the first 50 miles. I hit a rough spot around mile 20ish on an out and back section that had some major hills. We had not driven this part of the course the day before, so I had no idea what was coming at me. I guess I’m kind of glad we didn’t drive it because I would’ve freaked out. I just kept telling myself that I only had to do it once. I was happy to hit the loop that ended up going through LaGrange where I knew I had fans waiting for me! La Grange was a town on the loop portion of the bike course, so I rode through it twice. They had a festival going on so there were quite a few people there cheering for cyclists. I felt good going through the first loop…so good I was too speedy for Eric’s camera!
Loop 2 – not so pretty. They had started to run out of water at all the aide stations. At this point all I was drinking was water because the sports drink wasn’t sitting right with me. On top of that, my lower back was really starting to hurt with all the hills. I could tell my speed was dramatically decreasing, but I just kept telling myself to push through.
I was happy to see some familiar faces on my second loop through LaGrange. Kevin, Cindy, Jennie, and Renee had shown up so I had double the cheering power!
Take me out of my misery!
I fell apart after this point. I hit some pretty tough hills and had to get off my bike to walk up them. My back hurt way too much to struggle up the hill. Luckily I wasn’t the only one walking the hills so I didn’t feel ridiculous. In fact, at this point was when I started to see all the people laying on the side of the road. I just kept saying to myself, “don’t be one of those people…you can make it to the end of this bike!” I felt bad for all of those people, but I had to carry on.
Most of the aide stations on my second loop were out of water. At one aide station they were filling up used water bottles from a garden hose. I wasn’t going to complain and I took the water willingly. I tried to keep eating because I knew I needed it, but all I could get down was a package of shot blocks, a bagel with peanut butter, and a few twizzlers. I should’ve consumed more calories but my body just wasn’t having it with the heat.
Looking at the results, here were my bike splits:
23 mi (1:19:15)
17.41 mph average
40 mi (1:02:09)
16.41 mph average
70.5 mi (2:05:13)
14.61 mph average
112 mi (3:04:36)
13.49 mph average
TOTAL BIKE
112 mi. (7:31:13)
14.89 mph
1863 overall (out of 2,995)
75 in division (out of 100)
My goal was to finish in 7 hours. I bet I could’ve pulled this off had I had a working bike computer and the ability to pace myself. Oh well- I’ll get over it (oh wait…I am!).
I kept counting down the miles and was more than excited to hand my bike off to one of the bike catchers. I told the volunteer who took my bike to take it far, far away from me. And then I walked away.
I grabbed my run gear bag and headed back into the changing tent for change number 3 of the day. I took my sweet time on this transition (11:13 of my sweet time as a matter of fact) as I was a little loopy and had some difficulty figuring out what I wanted to keep with me from my bag and what I wanted to leave behind. I grabbed the gummy bears that I had packed myself but left the tums behind (stupid me!).
Whew! This race reporting is exhausting. I’ll try to finish up the run report tomorrow if I have some time.
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