Every first weekend of June our club has a race. The past two years it became 3 days. It coincides with Karibu Tanzania Fair, an annual fair for tour and hotel operators to drum up more business and make deals among themselves.
This year we separated from them and they did not even notice we weren't there. We had it second weekend of June so various key players could be there. This year it was again 3 days but 4 stages, we snuck in a 8 km uphill time trial.
As I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, my job is more demanding these days. The weeks leading up to the race were even worse than normal and as it came down to the date it became clear I would miss at least one day of the race, Friday.
I went to the start of the long stage on Friday. About 180km but the first 30 km controlled (slow) through town. It was hard but i managed not to run home for my bicycle. Back at work it was slow until noon and then everything went to hell until the evening, when we replace a Hard drive on the machine that controls bandwidth.
I decided to go join them for the longer stage back to arusha, 110 km or so back to Arusha into the wind. So I got up and left around 9am and rode the 120km to the start, ate lunch with them and tried to race back. The first 35km is flat and some short hills and i could stay up, after that there were several long hills and I dropped off with Thad to wait for Mike and Henry and we rode in as a group.
By the end my feet were going asleep. I threw up all the lunch with 50km remaining but recovered and held my own. Kind of a strange way to warm up for a bike race but at least I got in the race
If you ever leave the internet company, don't get a job as a sports trainer. No one would like your warm up technique. Byrna
ReplyDelete