Race swag! Love the Jersey! It did not come in our race swag back. We could purchase those separately. I needed a new bike jersey so I ordered me one. It's so SOFT. Love it! I had really been excited about this bike ride coming up. It was a benefit for the Extra Table. My friend, Meloyde, had said she would ride with me. We had planned to just ride for fun. Especially since it wasn't a race and she hadn't been out on a long bike ride in awhile. However, the week of the ride she backed out on me to go to the beach! Go figure! LOL Don't worry... I'll still give her heck about it! So then I was all sad and having a pity party. I did know several others riding, but they are all in the middle of training for ironman races and I currently can't keep up with them. Usually they averaging anywhere from 20-25 mph! I may never keep up with them. 😁 So I was a little down and not real excited about riding 62 miles without a friend to talk to. But that all changed on ride morning! 💓
The 62 distance started at 7am so we had to be there real early because they were going to have short breaks where they would close the road between events. They had a 62 mile bike, 32 mile bike, 12 mile run, 10K run and a 5K run all scheduled within like 30 minutes of each other. I believe over 790 people participated in the event. 😍
As I was heading to the back of the pack to start, I ran into my old friend Jason! He is the one I use to drive to the coast and ride my long bike rides with when I first trained for Ironman. He was an awesome training partner! He really pushed me! I was so ready for them hills in Chatty by the end of our training and then had my bike wreck the week before the race and ended up not racing and then he had a bike wreck and the next year I didn't get to train with him on those hills. 😢 I was so happy to see him! He had brought a friend with him that was going to be riding her longest distance to date! He grabbed a quick pic of us before we started.
There I am in the blue dot shirt behind Jason and his friend. 💜You can also tell I was way in the back of all the bikers. 😀 I had missed my 50 miler the weekend before so I knew I would be starting out slow and easy. 😀 Here's a picture of bikers ahead of me.
It was a beautiful morning! Temps were cool, but warmed up fast. Once we started I rode with Jason for like 1-2 miles and then everyone started spreading out. He was talking to his friend and I didn't want to intrude on his coaching so I just started pedaling and telling myself to just go nice and easy and not stress over pace. Lisa, my coach, had even told me to quit stressing and just have FUN. So that was my plan. I was only a couple of miles in when Susan rode up beside me and said hello. We see each other from time to time on the trace biking. We've never trained together. We just know each other from seeing each other training. 😀 She told me to have a good ride and she got ahead of me. It was then that I started noticing that I was staying right with her and her 3 other friends that were riding. Soon we all started talking and ended up riding the rest of the 62 miles together! It was awesome! I could hardly believe I was keeping up with them and I wasn't even feeling tired. Yes, those hills are tough, but my heart rate stayed basically in zone 2 the whole ride. I just felt so good. Now they were not pushing it either! She is doing a half ironman in 2 weeks so she was not out there pushing her max speed... that's probably why I kept up with them. Hee Hee 😂 We only stopped at one rest stop.. mile 34 and grabbed this pic. They had a couple other rest stops, but we decided we didn't need to stop so we just kept riding. That's good ironman practice too.. those stops really kill your time! I know first hand!
I was so happy when I finished and looked at my watch with my time. My bike computer had died around mile 10 because I forgot to charge it. However, I was glad because I couldn't look down and stress over my pace. 😁 I had hoped I could make the 62 miles in 4 hours... I beat that! Yippie! The roads were very nice. We only had one short road that was bumpy and we had very little traffic and the cars that did pass us were very nice and gave us plenty of space. I felt safe the entire ride. 💛
I grabbed a pic with the chicken and met up with several running friends after I finished. The after party was awesome. Great food, drinks and music! They really did a great job putting on the event and I think I read that they raised like $65,000 for Extra Table! 😍 The bike route was marked extremely well. I only had to use my dog horn like 3 times on the route. THANK GOODNESS I had it!! Dogs scared me to death when they come out chasing you on a bike. My heartrate will be out the roof! I think my friends even enjoyed that I had my horn. 😀 Susan said she would be ordering her one ASAP. 😅
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