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Kimra’s first
bicycle race
Going
into my first bicycle "race" (my husband reminds me time and
time again that they are "challenges" not races, because
they're not official competitions) I was as blind and
ignorant as can be. Which, as it turned out, was a good thing. Because
if I had had even an INKLING of how hard it would be to bicycle one
hundred miles up mountains that I wouldn't even feel comfortable driving
up in my car; well, it would have been over before it began. But, in my
infinite ignorance, I didn't think a mountainous 100-mile challenge
would be any biggie. "Look at it this way." I told my hubby
and our friend Kathy, who shares the love of the "bike-ling"
as I like to call it, "Twenty five miles is nothing. Fifty miles is
not that hard, so how hard could one hundred be?"
"Are you sure we shouldn't just do the fifty?" My husband
urged. "One hundred miles is pretty far on a bicycle."
"We are NOT doing the fifty." I put my foot down. "Fifty
is for babies."
"Fifty can be a lot." Kathy, the only one of us with much
bicycling experience, said, "It really depends on the course."
Well, as it turned out,
Kathy was right, as she so often is when it comes to matters in which
she has infinitely more knowledge than I. I was jolly when we
began our ride, and we were fairly sure that the support crew was
kidding when, at mile 30, they told us the worst was still to come.
"In that case," I joked, (I was confidant they were joshing us
as we had already traveled up some hills that nearly blew my lungs and
legs straight off my body; so steep were the climbs) "I had better
take a Fig Newton."
"You'd better take two." Skeeter, who rode in the "drag
car" driven by Jerry behind my limping form the entire race, was
correct. Two would have been a good idea. The entire pack might not have
been a bad idea. By mile 75, the course took a turn for the extreme and
we hit a 20-mile mountainous climb. After about 5 miles of peddling to
the point of exhaustion, I got off and started pushing my bike up the
mountain. When even that proved too exhausting, I gave my husband the
S.O.S. sign and he came off his bike and pushed his and MY bike.
Periodically, I rode and pushed up the mountains, and Kathy too needed
assistance from my hubby with bike pushing. Behind, us, Jerry and
Skeeter, both of whom were pretty hefty dudes with a bad smoking habits
(but with hearts of gold) urged us on to the finish line. "You
gotta hunker down when ya ride!" They told us.
At mile 97 or so, my hubby, Kathy and I had separated a bit. Kathy had
chugged ahead with some last minute reserves that no one suspected she
had. I gamely rode with her until I could keep up no longer, and fell
behind. My husband, who had been eating a banana at a rest stop, had
been left in our dust as repayment for pushing our bikes up the
steepest climbs on the mountains. When I saw Jerry and Skeeter out of
their truck and waving their arms, yelling, I lifted my arms in the
victory sign. "YEAH ME!" I yelled. "I AM ALMOST
DONE!"
"YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY! TURN AROUND!!!!" Was what they
were actually saying. Drats. At this point, even one inch the wrong way
was enough to set me off into a meltdown. I had vetoed the last rest
stop entirely when I realized that I had pedaled past it and would need
to turn around to enjoy the "facilities", such as they were.
Still, I had no choice but to turn around and go the right way.... on my
final miles. When I was just a few hundred feet from the finish line, a
bunch of little boys under the age of 10 came out to the street. I was
nervous that they were going to jeer and throw things at me since I was
so far behind the rest of the pack. Instead, I realized with joy that
they were cheering for me.
"Go! Whooo!!!!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!!" They clapped and
whistled and stomped their feet. I felt like an Olympic gold medallist
as they ran along beside me, screaming their encouragement. (My
husband, who finished a few minutes after me said that the same boys
asked him what place he was in..... when my hubby confessed that he was
near the last, they consoled him by saying, "Dang.")
Finally, it was over. My whole body crawled with
a new sensation- fatigue (I am generally not one to push myself) and
somehow, I LIKED it. How SICK WAS THAT?!
"Next year, we'll do a better time." My husband said, as he
climbed off his bike, and Kathy agreed.
I wasn't so quick to agree- in my new arena of being enlightened, I
didn't even want to THINK about doing another challenge in the
mountains.
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