Monday, September 7, 2009

DICK EVANS MEMORIAL ROAD RACE


Yesterday day I rode in the Dick Evans Memorial Road Race, a 112 mile bike ride around the island of Oahu. Things were going pretty good. I believe I was in the second group back from the lead group. After clearing Kunia Road, I hooked up with Brian Denaro and a pretty big group and we were hammering away. Then I got a flat. I got a new tube in and found out my CO2 cartridge wasn't working. Luckily, one of the support vehicles had just pulled over and had a floor pump. I got back on and hammered away until I caught two guys who wanted to work together. As soon as we started to get organized, I got another flat. This one was worse. I was changing things out when the support vehicle pulled over. We found a cut in my tire and the tube was showing through a little. Luckily (again), one of the guys offered me a new tire and it just happened to be the same kind I had on. This evolution took about 30 minutes and by this time almost everyone had blown by me. I hammered it out as long as I could and passed several people. My goal this year was to better my time from last year. With the two flats, that didn't happen. I know I would have done well if I hadn't gotten the flats and had been able to stay with a group because despite having done the race solo from the North Shore, I felt pretty good. Oh, well...there's always next year.