67 miles. gale force winds. the time of my life

Who knew one of the biggest bike races in the world was on the bottom tip of Africa? Gotta love it! I have always loved riding bicycles. I started riding without training wheels very early and it was even my preferred method of running away from home when I was 4 (My dad found me on my way back from the park). So obviously when last year I saw 30,000 bicycles drive through where we live in Cape Town and heard that it is the biggest timed race in the world I said to my self "I have to do that one day". Here was my very first Cape Argus Cycle tour. Even Matt Damon was amongst the crowd. Not that we saw him.

(pulling over for a pit stop)

Now a year later "one day turned out to be yesterday. I left home extremely excited, armed with 2 liters of water and at least 5 energy bars. The start was cold and the wind was brutal, even blowing lots of people over which caused some serious chaos at the start and heading up the first hill there was a stream of people coming back down to their cars because the wind was just too much. They said there were gale force winds of 140 km/h and this was the hardest in 32 years of Argus history! What a “first”.

(my cheering section. I have good friends)

I decided to enjoy the day in spite of the wind and it ended up being one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

(the Argus attracts all kinds of people: the hard core racers, people from all over the world, and 3 guys in pink tutus)

The most breathtaking, impacting part of it was after about 4 hours, I was really tired and working really hard heading up a mountain when I rounded a corner and saw miles and miles of thousands of bicycles snaking up the mountain, with the ocean to our left and no noise of cars it was a breathtaking sight to behold.

(My very glamours pit stop, lots of attention, refilling water)

(Have to have sun block. The necessities... you know)
Toward the end I nearly killed myself, I got very eager to finish and thinking we are reaching the end and pedaling really hard just to find out we still have quite a while to go. I did complete the race and received a medal. Marysol came and picked me up and even let me lean on her because "tight" does not begin to describe how my legs felt after 6 1/2 hours on the bicycle. I had the time of my life and will definitely do next year's race. Hopefully in less time. Training starts tomorrow. What have you done recently that you loved?

PS: I found out I beat Matt Damon by half an hour!

67 miles. gale force winds. the time of my life

09 March 2009

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