On a day of almost perfect race conditions (a little less wind but I can't really complain), I completed my bike portion of our relay. First I have to thank my relay companions for agreeing to do this with me. Sandy was a trouper battling the waves of the swim, and did an excellent job too. Nancy with her kick butt run rounded out my team.
I was a little nervous about the whole bike experience. Hilly, windy tough, those were the adjectives I heard about this route. Then they had to change the route due to construction, still hilly, but you only rode into the wind, so having it at your back on the way home was nice, and I only had to ride 85km instead of 90. No problem. The first 20km felt like forever, well, at first I thought I had ridden the fastest 5 km of my life, because the first road marker said 5 km, and I thought wow that was fast. Turns out they were for the half ironman run, back to reality, I was only just starting it. There was a lot of climbing, at one point I didn't think I was ever going to get to the top of this climb, everytime I thought it was finished, it would ease a bit, then continue climbing. I think there was definately more climbs on the way out, and more downs on the way back. Don't know if I was faster on the way back or not, didn't look at my watch until I was done. Lots of things to look at, farms, houses, dead animals on the road, but 3 hours was a long time by yourself on the bike. At one point I realized that I was singing "The wheels on the bus go round and round" Did quite a few versus of that before I noticed. My other entertainment was tryng to figure out how I was going to get my water bottle into my aero bottle so that i could get another one without crashing or taking out the volunteer. BUt it wasn't as hard as I thought, no problems at all. Next thing I knew I was down to the last hilly 10km ( I think this was the worst 10k of the whole race). Then I was at the bike finish, where I didn't wipe out either, looking for Nancy's smiling face. It was a good ride. I wanted to finish in 3:15 and I did 3:07, so that was good. I did all the passing, so that made me smile. Today I feel good, no pain in my legs, my neck is stiff, but I think my girl parts would cry if I tried to ride today
. So who's in for next year?
