Friday, May 16, 2008

Kern Day One (or...baking in Bakersfield)


Well, I survived the first day of my second Kern....it was hot and windy. I am kind of tired and dehydrated (even after drinking 1 recovery drink, 2 water bottles, 5 gatorades, about 5 glasses of water at dinner, and 2 diet cokes (ok, so the diet coke didn't help, but it sure tasted good...) so this will be short and sweet.

It was the worst I have ever felt on a bike. The temperature was well over 100, although I'm not sure how much! I didn't really want to know. And it was windy, too. The wind was so hot, however, that it felt like being in a convection oven (I can only assume that's what being baked feels like). Although on a good note, I accomplished the following:

1. Finished.
2. Didn't throw up (came mighty close though)
3. Didn't blow up/pass out/ride off the road
4. Achieved my max heart rate at the finish (201)
5. Ran a higher avg. heart rate than I thought previously possible without blowing up...
6. Felt like I was racing in a sauna
7. Didn't drop my chain this year!
8. Got 4th.

And on a great note, my teammate Susie won!!!! She has over a minute on me, and with us sitting in 1st and 4th, we'll have our work cut out for us tomorrow. Tomorrow we have a 50 mile RR in the morning (with 7 time bonus opportunities), and a 13 mile Gibraltar-style hillclimb in the afternoon.
(sorry about the image quality..the lighting was very poor in the hotel hallway)

Ciao!!

2 comments:

Allison Krasnow said...

Keep drinking and salting your food and water :)

Thanks for the results photo. It's fun for me to see where you and my teammates all are since I'm back home.

Itinerant Rick said...

It was good to see you out there; you looked good at the end of the TT. It was interesting getting the 'front seat' view of your field this morning; lots of interesting stuff going on. I was wishing for view of what was going on behind after the field broke up, but it was nice to follow Susie and the other 4 from the front group, and real classy move by the 4 to wait for her after her mechanical. Ready for next year?