Monday, August 18, 2008

naruhodo nariki bike mountain race

An interesting race. The wet roads and crowded street made it difficult to maneuver on a triathlon bike, but an interesting experience, as I had never raced a pure bike road race before. But this was a mountain climb bike race, so I was in even more uncharted territory. I had no idea what to expect on race day.

When my group started we accelerated quickly up the gentle slope, and I had Hillary up over 20kph for the first 200 meters... I thought, this is easy...than we hit the first incline and my legs heated up. I was soon huffing and puffing, not used to the intensity on a bike (most of bike ironman training was long 3-6 hour rides at medium speed and low heartrate. I think my heartrate was faster than the Wednesday track workouts though. The roads were slippery and there were treacherous steel crates just for some extra slippage. At the halfway point (2.2k), I was passing a rider on his right, spun my back wheel, lost balance, hit the biker next to me as I had nowhere to go. He crashed as I regained balance. Felt very sorry but there was nothing I could do. The hill climb reminded me of the 4k climb called the beast in Zurich, except Nariki was a continuous climb. Tuff tuff tuff climb, but I managed to pass about 20 guys, and only got passed 2-3 times. Thanks to Keren for organizing and remembering to bring all his stuff!

Time for 4.4k was 21:43, about 12.1 kph.
Place was 152 out of 403 finishers.

motto元三