Monday, June 18, 2012

RAAM Post 13: Hair on Fire!!!!


Just had the pull of my race so far.  I was up when the start of the 800 foot descent into Kayenta started.  I put my time trial helmet on and let it fly.  I quickly ran down a Brazilian 4-man team and their support vehicle would not get out of the way.  I didn’t know what to do but went for a pass across the divider—I went by them and hammered it hitting 38 mph and their team did not drop back making it difficult for my follow vehicle to drop in behind me.  This, of course hampered my visibility, but my headlight was giving me enough to keep it safe—in my judgment.  I figured the best thing to do was to ride away from them as fast as I could—which I proceeded to do.

What I didn’t know was a caravan of 8 cars had came up upon our two race teams and they were local and impatient.  One came over next to us on the other side of the road—I could sense them and started honking their horn art us.  The Brazilians honked back if you can believe it—completely against the rules and completely lacking in common sense.  The local then turned on some bizzare chicken sounding horn.  I was confused to say the least.  My heart was pounding I just decided the best thing to do was to ride away from everyone.  I did and everything apparently got sorted out behind me and we the rest of the ride was quite a bit less exciting.

We just hit TS11 and have closed to within 6 minutes of the Police.  Whew-hew!

Here are the stats:

23:52
10.4 mile
217 watts
26.4 mph
80 rpm
428 cal
146 bpm/156 max

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