I have never shivered soo bad in my life as I did at the starting line!! I was thinking that I made a big mistake and would be paying the price for the next 2 hrs! Now as I said before... I had a plan. By riding the course in the lab earlier in the week, I had a general idea where the hills were and where the flats were. I had received a bike computer for my birthday and finally put it on the bike and had it working before we left. Part of the plan was to track where I was at to prepare for the hills... I couldn't get the computer to work during the warm-up!! When the starter said go, we were off... I don't remember ever feeling cold after that which made me very happy! Part 2 of the plan was to use my HR monitor to maintain a HR range that will keep me from blowing up... it worked up until the start and then freaked out and stopped reading. So much for the plan... I was letting the lead group of guys set the pace until we hit the first sand pit, which was called out, but I ended up taking the "bad line". This forced me off my bike and I was off and running. By the time I remounted the bike, at least 8-10 guys had passed me. I was thinking that it was only a mile (or less) into the race and I was already having issues, not a positive thing. I then just put my head down and ran my race. I was feeling pretty good and soon found myself riding with a guy for a while, so we talked a little. We found out that we were in the same class... and he told me that he ran 1:58 last year. I started thinking that I may be on pace for a sub 2 hr race. We passed a lot of people, I think I passed more people in this one race than I did in all the races this year. On one stretch, I put it in a big gear and attacked trying to gap him, but couldn't. Since he was in my class, I figured I would try and stay with him to the end and then race for the spot... this would have been a good plan until I caught one of the tandems. Now this wasn't the first tandem but it just so happens that I caught this particular one right before the final piece of single track and it took a long time before I could pass. By the time I got around them I was out of the hunt so I just hammered out the final miles. I figured that I had a decent time by the shear fact that I passed soo many people and had very little issues. I went over to the board and saw that not only did I break the 2 hr mark at 1:57:44 but I had also made the top 5 in my class!! WooHoo!!
Lastly, my favorite part of this race was that my wife also did the race and we got to hang out most of the weekend! This was her first Iceman and finished in a very solid time of 2:58!!
Next stop: Munson CX on Nov 16th in Monroe.
