I got up early, had breakfast then I headed to my friend's place to pick him up.
Not much of a warm up, I rode for maybe 1 kilometer or so then got back to the car and talked a bit with Martin. I saw Steve who was there so I went and talk with them a bit.
It was a really hilly course and I am not a hill type of guy so it was not that easy.
That was weird, we had a start then rode for 5k and after that we stopped and wait for a second start, but this time only those in the 100k started. The 50k had to wait 5-10 minutes before they could start.
The start was in the middle of a hill, I have no idea why. I mean half the people there almost hit each other while trying to clip in ;) After that I lost Martin, he's way better then me climbing hills and I knew that today would be his day.
When we reached the top of the first hill I saw a pack maybe 1500/2000 foot in front of me and I decided that those would be my friends for the race. So I started accelerating to reach them and some people decided to follow me. Nothing like a free ride ;)
I stuck with them for a while, after maybe 10k I saw Martin next to me. I was not too sure why he was there, in my mind he would be way ahead of me already. We rode together for a long while, with that pack that i decided to adopt earlier. At some point we were at the bottom of a hill and someone said that the aid station was up that hill. I was happy because one of my bottle was empty at that point.
When we reached the top of the hill there was one woman there with 2, maybe 3 bottle of water. and I was like WTF. I had no way to grab one of them so I decided I would get one next aid station. I knew we had only two aid station. Honestly I was not that happy with that, damn why there were not more people then her to give water ...
Then we had another hill, climbed it and when we reach the top I saw ... a aid station with ton of water and people. I then realized that this woman was there to give water/food to her team and no one else :o
At that point I had the feeling that the pack was a bit too slow for us, so me Martin and some others just dropped them and we started pushing.
We had around 50k done, it was about time to turn and go back to the start line. When we turned I realized that the wind, my friend, decided to start blowing much stronger that t was supposed. The weather man said 10 km/h, it was like 22 km/h ... Twice as much, I was not that happy about it. That made me realized that I could not afford to lose my little pack at that time.
We rode for another 20 km or so and then we reached the hill. It was a real bitch, 8km or so of climb after 70km ... man that was not necessarily. Anyway, when we started climbing Martin and one girl decided that they were heading first and I lost them pretty fast. That hill killed out pack, when I finally reached the top of it I was all by myself. There was two guy in front of me, maybe 2000 foot, and a lot of people still climbing. At that point I had to make a decision.
Either I slow down and wait for a new pack to get together, or I start accelerating and try to get back with the pack in front of me. There was 6 of them from my estimate and they probably had at least one kilometer on me.
So I decided that I still had enough energy to push and get back to that front pack. That's where I was happy with all that triathlon training. I am used to ride by myself and I can push some really nice speed. So I started hammering the pedals trying to get back to the front pack.
It took me maybe 5 km before I could see them, at that point I was all by myself. When I reached the last aid station I grabbed a bottle of water and kept pushing.
When I got by the pack, I saw that Martin was in there so I rode next to him and started trash talking him a bit. For the last year he told me how he would kick my ass on that race etc etc. And there we were, 20 km for the finish line and I was still there, pushing him.
For the next 15 km it looked like this, I was pushing and trash talking him and we were having a lot of fun. Then we reached the last 5km, I knew there was no way Martin would let me finish ahead of him, he's way too stubborn for that ;)
At some point he did escape me during a climb and took maybe a 1000 foot advance on me. I tried to keep with him during the last couple of climbs and at some point I was pretty sure I would get back to him. On the last stretch, I was right behind him. Maybe 200 foot and I was pushing everything I had to try to beat him but he finally crossed the finish line 14 seconds ahead of me.
I was really hoping that I would beat him, but 14 seconds is a win for me. At that same date last year he would have beat me by at least 20 minutes. So I am happy :)
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