Wow, was this a doozy. As I said before, when I drove the bike course it seemed fairly tough. And it was. The first 1.5-2 miles all being up a pretty decent grade is a tough way to start any bike race, but I settled in right away, tried to get some speed on the small amount of level grade before starting up the hill and then just told myself to be smooth and fast, and to try to avoid “pedal mashing” as much as possible. Unfortunately, on these hills, some pedal mashing was going to be necessary.
I started passing people right away – always with an encouraging word like “looking strong” or “way to go”, or a “good morning.” Triathlons are fun that way. Everyone seems in it together, and there was lots of encouragement.
As I turned up the big incline, I got out of my saddle and decided to push it fairly hard to the top. I passed about 15 bikers in that first 1.5 miles, and felt good about that. At the top of the hill I got some speed, and then tried to go easy for the next mile to get my heart rate back down (it was in the 170s – way too high on the bike!) and let my legs rest for a bit. Then I started flying. I was passing people left and right, riding hard, enjoying the cool air, and feeling really, really strong.
The only problems I had in the first half of the bike involved traffic. Twice I got behind a car that was following a biker going quite a bit slower than me, but wouldn’t pass without 8 miles of clear road ahead. Both times this happened I came up on the car toward the bottom of a hill, when I had a lot of speed I wanted to carry into the next climb, only to have to get on my brakes and wait for the car to pass the slower bikers, then power my way up the hill. Argh.
It probably didn’t cost me more than 30 seconds total, but it did cost me in terms of energy. Nothing to do about it, though, and I tried not to let it get to me.
Then, in the most beautiful section of the course, came the Hill of the Damned. I still get out of breath thinking about it. As I started around the corner and up the hill, it was carnage. There were at least a dozen people on this ¼ mile hill when I started up, and all but one of them were off their bikes, pushing. I geared way down, and about a quarter of the way up was out of my saddle pedaling hard. As I passed people on cruisers, mountain bikes, and quite a few road bikes, I tried to say something encouraging just to keep myself going. I passed a guy wearing bike shoes, click-clacking his way up the hill, and just thought, “I don’t want to have to walk up this in my bike shoes. NOT COOL.”
Anyway, I made it to the top, and caught the one other person who rode the whole way just over the apex.
It was pretty much all downhill for the last 5 miles at that point, with just a few small climbs that I carried a lot of speed into. I was cruising at 35+mph quite a bit of the time, hoping I saw the corners in time. The last 2.5 miles were flatter, down in a valley, and I also came upon runners at this point.
This was the only other time I had trouble with a car – with runners on one side of the road, and some slow bikers, combined with this driver’s not knowing where she wanted to go, I got caught sucking exhaust and did get a bit flustered. I was slowed WAY down waiting for her to pass or turn off. Finally she did and I busted past the next couple bikers, and saw the bridge back to the transition area.
The bike course was definitely a strong part of my race. I have no idea how many people I passed, other than it was definitely more than 30, and I WASN’T PASSED ONCE. Nobody even threatened to pass me.
I got in behind two other bikers coming into transition rather slowly, so took time to loosen my shoes and take one foot out as I came to the dismount area. Unfortunately, my other foot didn’t slip out, so I unclipped and headed into transition with one bare foot and one click-clacking shoe!
Official Bike Results:
37:47
Male Novice Rank: 1/13
Overall Male Rank: 39/123
Clydesdale Rank: 2/10
End Result: Awesome. I think I could have been sub-37:00 without the car issues, but otherwise the bike course was incredible. Looking at overall results, I was fairly competitive with the field, other than the rocket-ship-riding open category professionals that were down around 30-32 minutes.
Rocket ship disguised as a bike
TRANSITION 2:
After re-racking my bike and slipping off my other bike shoe, I took off my helmet and bandana, threw on my hat and shoes, grabbed my race belt, and headed for the stairs out the other side of the transition area. This was a fairly easy transition, but I wasn’t real fast.
Official T2 Results:
1:15
Male Novice Rank: 10/13
Overall Male Rank: ?
Clydesdale Rank: 5/10
End Result: 10/13 isn’t good, but I can easily shave 20-30 seconds off what I did, and in a race that’s well over an hour long, 20 seconds is hard to get too worked up about. I just need to practice a bit more.
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