Last weekend, I did my first ever bike race in Collingwood, Ont. I missed out on doing the race last year and was excited about giving it a go this year...although the night before the race I was kicking myself for not signing up for the 50 mile race...it was going to be a chilly morning and being on the bike for that long was going to hurt...no matter what 100 miles is challenging and I knew it was going to be over 107 miles/172km...so I was kind of dreading waking up early Sunday morning.
Sunday morning was a brisk morning..8 Celsius and I have to be honest, I considered staying warm in bed, which seemed like a much better option than putting on all my warm bike gear..but SV got me moving and we met up with 2 of his boys (Team Size 9....I was the token female member)...I started the ride with them but expected to be on my own for most of it.
The ride was a challenging course to say the least...some great climbs and they threw in some tough head wind around the 100km point to make sure we really had some fun. The last 50km of this race was brutal...the King of the Mountain climb, the climbs to the Ravena bakery and then 5 stinger climbs to Scenic Caves...all of which put my quads/hamstrings on the verge of cramping...By the time I turned at the bakery, 15km from the finish...all I wanted was to be done...I started attacking the hills and just thought of the finish line...I felt really strong even though I was tired.
In the end I am very happy with how I did...my goal going in was to be under 5:30 and top 10 in the woman's field (during the ride I decided I didn't care and I just wanted to be done) so my 5:20 finishing time and 8th place overall (2nd in my age category) was a great end to a challenging day and I even finished smiling!!
