Race 1 of 2011! (Bike and Run)
May 8, 10:58 AM
The start of the bike was on the bike path which was a no-passing zone for safety reasons. That didn’t stop at least one guy who passed me on the way out, though. The original route was on roads but there was construction on one road and we couldn’t use it. We turned onto West Union St. and started the regular course which was pretty hilly.
There were a few smaller hills before we hit the bottom of the first of two bigger hills. Just a little way up it I got passed by a guy who went pretty close to me. It threw me off a little and I went off the pavement into the soft shoulder. I was trying to keep straight and my bike drifted back toward the pavement where it hit the 2in drop off from the pavement to the gravel I was on. It knocked my bike out underneath me and I hit the ground, hard.
Thankfully I was only going about 14mph so I wasn’t badly hurt, but it shook me up quite a bit. Add to that how cold my legs still were from being so wet and the shock of falling and it took a few moments to get up and moving again. It felt like forever, but after 1.5min I was back on the bike and moving again. Thankfully this didn’t happen on a descent, though, because I was hitting 35mph going down some of those hills! There were a few pretty rough hills and most of the first leg (it was out-and-back) was mainly uphill. The worst, though, were a couple short but very steep hills that slowed me down real bad. Other than that, though, I did pretty good.
Coming back into town and hitting the bike path I was behind a few people who seemed to be doing the same speed as I was. Unfortunately, one of them started slowing down as we got closer to the end and, even though I could have kept going at 17-18mph, I had to drop down to 15mph for the last .5mi or so.
Transitioning off the bike was pretty quick. I just took off my helmet, riding shoes and put my bike on the rack. It only took a little over a minute and I was out on the run!
The run started off a little rough. I felt kinda sick to my stomach and had to walk a couple times in the beginning but after that I was able to get moving and kept running the rest of the way. My overall pace was still pretty good, though, so It worked out well. I walked for a little less than a minute but still made my 5k under 30 min so that was pretty good! When I got to the halfway point I grabbed a little water from the volunteers there. They obviously had been having a good time doing their job because they were all cheering and shouting. I kept my water cup with me and when they saw me coming back with it (it was only about 30ft or so) they got all excited and pulled the garbage can out so I could throw the cup away without stopping.
Coming into the end I was starting to really feel the pain from the race. I was starting to drag a bit but kept pushing through the pain to get across the line. When it was all done I felt great. I was drained, but felt such a great feeling that I really finished the race. I had hoped to do under 1.5h total time but that was a very aggressive goal. I ended up finishing 1:42:59 which was about 15min faster than my last Sprint.
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Great job, ROb!
— Dad · May 19, 07:49 PM · #
You’re cute dear :-)
— Rob · May 8, 05:03 PM · #
You were awesome out there…and you looked HOT too!
— Kristy · May 8, 02:08 PM · #