I'm back from Hawaii! I was sad to leave, but had such a great experience. I would love to live there- but am afraid I'd never get anything done! So I have take a few moments to share some of the amazing experiences I had over the last 5 days.
We arrived in Honolulu Friday afternoon. After checking into our hotel we picked up our bikes and got them back together. Friday evening was spent socializing and spending some time with my teammates from TNT. I have been training with this group for the last 4 months, but once we got in Hawaii I had the opportunity to truly get to know them. What an amazing group of people they are! Everyone of them has such a great heart and I developed a bond with nearly every one of them.
Saturday morning was our "shake down ride." This was just a short ride with the team around Honolulu to make sure that our bikes were in working order and ready for the race after being shipped 2500 miles. My bike seemed to be doing great. (But keep reading!)
Saturday afternoon I spent the day down at the beach on a surf board. Those that know me, know I love to surf, so it was a fun time to be able to do so in Waikiki. I did have a minor set back while surfing - I was stung by a sea urchant. (OUCH!) FYI: Vinegar is a lifesaver if you ever find your self in the same situation. (Though a few people at the beach did offer to pee on my foot, I just opted for the vinegar.)
Saturday evening we had a pre ride pasta party. This was a carb loading exercise and social event for all the TNT participants. There were quite a few chapters from TNT doing the Honolulu Century. We had our Silicon Valley team, and teams from SF, Napa, LA, Washington, Alaska, Utah, Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Florida, and Indiana. It was a cool event. A cancer survivor on our Silicon Valley team who rode in the race was the guest speaker. There was a down pour of rain right in the middle of the banquet (which was on a hotel patio) which made for an interesting, but fun dinner.
Sunday morning was the big event. We met in our hotel lobby at 5:30 am and rode to the start together as a team. I had any and everything that could go wrong on a bike happen to me during the ride. But I started out to accomplish something and I eventually did -- 11 hours later. It became comical by the end of the day. First off, the ride is an international event. It is a huge tourist event for Janpanese riders as JAL is one of the sponsers. There were a lot of local riders, a few hundred TNT participants, Canadian, Austrailan, US, and Japanese riders were among the 4000 participants.
Silicon Valley Cycle Team Summer 2008
me before all the drama started
my ride group
My ride group again - we had squirrel tails on the back of our helmets, cause we had an affinity for running over the dang things on the road!
Here are a few of my escapades in the course of my ride.:
At about mile 10 I ran over some glass in the road and got a flat tire. My ride group stopped with me to fix my flat. (We broke off into ride groups of about the same pace. We had 6 partipants, a coach and a mentor who was our ride support in our group.) Just after my flat was the biggest climb of the ride. It wasn't as bad as I had anticipated it would be, and the view at the top made it all worth while. Then came what I thought would be the fun part-- the descent. After taking a photo op at the top, we got back on our bikes to start the descent. Going about 40 mph on a ride bike down a steep hill is quite an adrenline rush. Only as soon as I got up to speed going town this hill, I realized I dropped my chain and blew my rear bike tire. (Scary.) I must have had someone watching over me because I somehow managed to get to the side of the road unscathed. So I was on the side of the freeway at mile 15 fixing my second flat tire when I heard a lot of commotion. I looked up to see that an inexperienced rider had suddenly hit his brakes in the middle of the high speed desent, causing the rider behind him - a girl on the LA TNT team to hit his rear tire and go flying over his head landing on her head in the middle of the freeway. I ran over and my coach who had stopped to help me started directing traffic around the crash. I took care of the injured rider until the ambulance got there. Luckily, the other rider had no major injuries. (That in itself was amazing as she had cracked her helmet in the fall. But I guess the helmet did it's job.)45 minutes or so later, the she left in the ambulance and I went back to working on my flat. After changing the tube, the tire blew out again. At this point my coach and I realized that the problem was actually not the tube, but that I had blown out the side wall of my actual tire. I had plenty of spare tubes, but no extra tires. I was way bummed because it was only mile 15 and I wanted to finish this dang ride! My coach, Patrick, took the tire off his bike and told me to finish on his tire and he would drop out because he had done this ride before. When all was said and done, and my tire was fixed I was a good hour to hour and a half behind the rest of my ride group. We usually pace line about 16-18 mph on the flats. Sometimes 20. I paced into the wind with no pace line at 25 mph over the next 30 miles and actually caught my ride group shortly before the 50 mile mark!
Bethann, Colin, and Mike
Chris, Gloria, and Naomi- I was still somewhere miles behind jamming on my own at this point...
Needless to say after pushing that hard, I was beat by the time we reached the 50 mile mark, and I little discouraged that I still had another 50 miles to go. I got back on my bike after the 50 mile rest stop and just hung in the back of my group to try and recoup. They were trying to pick up the pace and I was burnt out at this point, so I told them I was going to take it easy on that leg and meet up with them at the next rest stop.
At about mile 63 we were crossing over a narrow bridge that was uneven and wet and muddy. I don't know exactly what happened, but somehow, my tire slid out from underneath my and I laid my bike down on my left side. This was my peak of absolute FRUSTRATION! I couldn't hold back anymore and just started crying more out of frustration than being hurt. A man fishing on the bridge helped me up and said that I was the 4th rider he had watched crash in that spot. I got to the side of the road and started to evaluate how badly my bike and my body were hurt. As I was putting pieces back together on my bike, I watched another rider crash in the same spot. I took a breather in the grass on the side of the road and tried to recompose myself. I had some bruises and road rash but no major injuries. In absolute frustration, I tried to decide whether or not to keep going with the ride. I then thought of my dad and the reasons I signed on for the ride in the first place, immediately started crying again only to look up and see my ride support, Colin ride up to check on me. He hadn't known I had crashed, but was checking on me since he hadn't seen me in a few minutes. Once again I was being watched over. He helped me back on my bike and we rode into the next rest stop together.
To my surprise, at the next rest stop, my coach, Patrick, showed up on a new tire he had gotten at one of the aid stations. (I had left him with my worthless one.) From that point on, Patrick rode by my side knowing how frustrated I was and said that he was going to see to it that I crossed the finish line if he had to carry me across. We rode for 10 miles or so with no problems. Then I got my 4th flat. I was out of spare tubes at this point, but Patrick saved the day by giving me his last spare. Back on the road we picked up the pace until mile 80. Somehow, I must have hit a rock or something and broken the spokes on my front tire. Because of the broken spokes, I had to do the last 20 miles at a 10 mph pace. That sucks when you're used to riding a 20 mph pace! But by 80 miles, there was no way that I wasn't going to finish. Patrick and I slowly made our way toward the finish line. Then about 100 yards from the finish, I got my 5th and final flat! Patrick and I sat down and laughed so hard that we cried! We contemplated just carrying the bike over the finish but decided that since we had picked up another tube at the last rest stop "just in case" we might as well use it. We were now quite inept at quickly fixing flats and got back on the bikes and rode across the finish line at 5:22 pm with a lai of busted bike tubes around our necks! By that point we just laughed and I quickly handed my bike to someone and asked them to get it out of my site for awhile.
I celebrated actually finishing by going for a swim in the ocean in all of my bike gear. I then disassembled my bike to by shipped back to the mainland and got some interesting looks as I walked down the street back to my hotel in my bike gear soaking wet from my victory swim.
Sunday evening we had a team victory party. Dinner and music. It was a great time. You wouldn't believe how much food a group of cyclists who have just rode a 100 miles can consume.
my ride group at the victory party (minus one wet slightly behind rider who was still at the hotel changing...)
Monday a group of us rented mopeds and did our recovery ride on bikes with a motor! (So much less work!) We just rode around the island and had a good time together. A group of us went snorkeling at Haunauma Bay which was amazing. We had lunch at cheeseburger in paradise, went riding around the island some more and hung out as a team that evening.
the TNT biker gang: Scott, Me, Hilton, Ron
Tuesday morning we took our mopeds for one last spin and packed up and headed back to the mainland. All and all it was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had, even with the set backs. I worked hard to accomplish what I set out to do, raised 4200 for Leukemia reseach, and made 40 great new friends who I plan on continuing to ride with!
Thank you to my family and friends for all the support throughout this summer. I wish everyone of you could've been there with me.
*
