Wow, Saturday was my 3rd team practice. I can’t believe it’s been 3 weeks already! I received an email from Coach Albert on Friday evening, talking about our ride and one part in particular made me quite nervous about the ride. And I quote: “Considering where we are in our schedule, the few hills on this course may be a bit challenging”. I mean wouldn’t you be a little nervous after reading that? I admit though, I was pretty excited about the ride, because Justin’s mountain bike team was scheduled to ride with us [road bike team].
Justin & I got everything organized so that come the AM we could get the girls up, feed them, get them read as well as ourselves & quickly head out the door to Justin’s dad’s house, who was watching them while we rode. We got out the door on time, which is a feat in and of itself. We dropped the girls off & headed to Joe Pool Lake, where the 36 mile ride began.
The ride started off great, cool, sunny, lake side, with a nice breeze. As we started around the corner I noticed we had a pretty good tailwind which meant on the backside of the ride I’d be paying for it. I enjoyed it while it lasted. I experienced the “challenging hills” coach was talking about in the beginning and hoped that soon we’d be riding more of rolling hills instead of steep inclines. Just then I look ahead & notice this quite elevated, long hill ahead. One of my teammates, Susan, and I were chatting just before I saw the hill. When I saw it, I said, “Ohh this is going to be a good one!” She pumped me up, gave me a few VERY helpful pointers, one of which was to pick a spot on the side of the road. Then ride to that point then pick another. This way it breaks the hill down into smaller portions so that it doesn’t overwhelm you.
As I start to climb this man zooms past me, which of course frustrated me, but I tried not to think too much of it & focus on the task at hand – making it up this “mountain”. Susan’s pointers really helped, but I was really starting to get tired ½ way up. Almost like clockwork Susan starts saying, “you can do it, take deep breaths, you’re doing great!” I look over to pick another spot & what do I see? …The man who zoomed past me, jumping off his bike to walk the rest of the way. I trucked past him and before long I was at the top. I definitely let out a shout, “I DID IT!” at the top. I was so proud & of course thanked Susan for her encouragement & coaching. Couldn’t have done it without her.
We got to our rest stop 20 miles in and my mentor, John, and Susan asked me what I had eaten that morning because I pulled away from him on two different occasions on the ride; one of which was the “mountain”. He said he almost blew a lung trying to catch up. It felt SO good to hear that! Guess my hard work is paying off!
I finished the second half of the ride in pretty good time, doing pace lines with Susan & John. I am glad we rode together doing the pace lines because the wind seriously picked up and it was blowing head on. I’d say the last 3-4 miles was the absolute hardest. 1. Because of the head winds and 2. Because of the cars and motorcycles that were zooming by us on a 1 lane road thanks to construction. Most of the cars and motorcycles were not cognizant of us, because they flew by us pretty close and one car honked at us as he flew past. Since he was behind us at that point it startled us pretty good. NOT COOL.
Well, I finished the ride, BEATING JUSTIN! That’s right, Rachael creamed Justin by about 20 minutes!! Now I will give him this, he was on a mountain bike and I was on a road bike AND he did an extra few miles going on a “extra credit hill” that most people chose not to go on. That being said, I still beat him by 20 minutes! HAHA! GO RACHAEL! I can be my own cheerleader right?
Oh and I can’t end this post without telling you about our FLAT TIRE! Yes, we got back to the car & Justin noticed our car was leaning catawampus. My front driver’s side tire was flat; thanks to a nice screw we got in Jake’s neighborhood. Gotta love new construction. Justin said it was no big deal, he could get it changed quickly since we had a spare in the back.. However, as he rolled the spare to the driver’s side I notice this sparkly thing in the tire. We take a closer look and it’s a nail! We bought my QX4 6 years ago and have never had a flat until now so we’ve never looked at the spare. I never thought to check the spare tire before leaving the car lot. Lesson learned. I have to give my thanks to Jake & Linda for coming to our rescue!
That's it for now.
-Rachael
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