Tucson, Arizona
El Tour De Tucson is one of the biggest cycling events in the United States and North America for that matter. The race was well done, and I can't imagine what it takes to organize and run such a huge event that circles the enitre city. The thought of being on my bike for 109 miles had long haunted me. That is especially true since I had to pull my aero bars off to be legal for this race. I had planned to train for the race for weeks prior to the race without my aero bars. That never happened. I had planned to train moving closer and closer to the distance to prepare for the race. I had doubts of whether or not I could even finish this race based on my lack of training. I lined up in a packed chute at 5:00 a.m. in the gold section. There were so many bodies, and so many bikes. I had moments of exhaustion and moments of bizarre strength. I was questioning whether I could finish at about 60 miles and then from 70 to 80 I passed hundreds of riders on a long flat. The hardest part of the race was definitely the last 30 miles. There was a fierce headwind that actually made me curse out loud. At times during the race I was traveling over 30 MPH, but that headwind slowed me to 11-12 mph for the entire last 30 miles. My quads started to feel like there were little knives stabbing into them. My neck hurt. My wrists were throbbing, my elbows and shoulders hurt. My triceps felt like they were going to cramp. After over 6 hours of non-stop hard exercise my body was starting to shut down and tell me to stop. My stomach was sick of gels, chomps and power bars. I got a little worried. The last 9 miles ticked off so slowly and painfully that I wanted to quit. In those last miles my mental focus was beginning to suffer also. I wanted to draft off people to escape the wind, but I couldn’t trust my riding proficiency to avoid collision in my impaired mental state so I stayed it alone. We were traveling along the I10 freeway frontage road for the last 10 miles of the race and all I wanted to see was a sign that mentioned the Congress exit. That sing seemed to take forever to appear. I have never had so much sympathy for those behind me before in a race. I felt great pity for those poor souls still out on that course facing that afternoon wind and hoped they could soon dismount their bikes and be able to stop pedaling soon. Anybody who had to pedal longer than I did I felt extremely sorry for, because I was DONE! I did not want to go another mile I crossed the finish line and got off my bike and struggled to walk as the knives in my quads intensified. I became fearful that they would cramp and I would fall down and embarrass myself. I tried to find some water. I just wanted stop moving. I found a park with grass on the way back to the car and layed down with my feet elevated up on a big rock for about 15 minutes and the stabbing pains in my quads subsided. My legs felt fine after that, and by some miracle have felt fine ever since. I don’t understand it. I did not even get sore. A bit of geographic trivia: according to google maps, the trip from our house to Tucson is shorter than the race. It takes over 2 hours to drive down there. This was an experience I will not forget, I made it and in the bicylcing world I can now say that I am a Centurion.
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