I’ve been riding. A lot.
I rode four days in a row, then took two days off. Then road five days in a row (including a race), then took two days off. That leaves us at today, the end of the second day. And tomorrow I’m going to ride 64 miles on my mountain bike in the Austin Rattler 100.
My legs are kinda tired. I’m really wondering how everything is going to work out. “Will I finish?” is a question that’s been dwelling in my head all this week.
The race that I mentioned above was the Pace Bend race. It’s got a much longer name, but I don’t remember it and really don’t feel like looking it up. The pre-ride was a lot of fun, my racing buddies: Ian, Justin, and Jacob showed up and we had a fun time. Justin and Jacob are both new to racing, this was their second race. Ian’s actually a better rider than me and has beaten me the last few races.
During the race, I did a pretty good job of pacing myself. I probably could have pushed just a little harder and stayed with the pack a little better, but I managed to catch up with a few people. I passed Ian when he got a flat, and passed Justin just on the trail. I passed Jacob as he was throwing up, and he still managed to finish just a minute behind me.
So I finished, Jacob finished, then Ian finished and we waited around for Justin to finish. Meanwhile the results were posted and I got tenth! Justin hadn’t shown up yet and we were starting to get worried. We started talking to the paramedics and the course marshals to see if he got hurt. I ended up asking a lady who just finished if she saw him and she said he’s like a half a mile from the finish and he’s pushing his bike. We wait a few moments then there he comes, he picked up his bike and was carrying it, running the last hundred yards of the course. I do have to say it was super epic, and even though he got last, he finished like a champ.
We all sat down for the raffle, and the mentioned that the 15 minute timer has started for score contentions. This means that the final scores are posted and I figured, I’m pretty stoked about being in tenth, I wanted to go look again.
To my horror, I was dropped to eleventh place. The apparently missed the second place guy and everyone got bumped down.
Oh, well…