4:00AM is the time you need to wake up in order to drive
three hours to Pawling New York, suffer on your bike for two hours, and then drive
home.
The Pawling Mountain (Did I mention the word mountain?) Road
Race was just less than forty miles in length with about 3650 feet of climbing.
The Cat 4 Women and Masters 35+ (my field) raced together.
It was a group of about fifty women, tightly packed until the first climb, a
Category 3, which was 2.63 miles in length. My first thought was “Wow, this
sucks.” My second thought was “Wow, I get to do this again on the second lap.”
After the first climb, the field spread out into a few
different groups, with single riders strung out in between. I was unfortunate
enough to be one of the single riders and it remained that way for most of the
race. On the first descent I caught someone and we worked together until the
second climb, then she fell off. That would be the only rider I saw for
miles...and miles.
It was definitely a unique experience to be out there on my
own, having no idea who was in front of me, who was behind me and by how much.
I wavered from full on Time Trial mode to spinning it up the hills at a
moderate pace. By the second climb of the last lap, all I wanted was to be
finished. It was almost ninety degrees and that was the closest I’ve felt to
dying on my bike.
I crossed the line, without knowing how many people had
finished ahead of me and how many people were still on the road. The results
were posted shortly thereafter and I made sure I was there to check them right
away...another sixth place finish, but this one feels even more earned than the
last, after all the suffering I endured during my first Mountain (Did I mention
the word mountain?) Road Race.
“Those things that hurt, instruct.”
- Benjamin Franklin
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