12 June 2005 Aloha State Cycling Games
USCF and Public Division Races

This was my first road race.  Although I usually enjoy riding with the Saturday morning Waikiki group, the Heavy Breathers, on a sort of Hawaii Bicycling League (HBL) ride, I have never given much thought of the idiotic notion of partaking of a pain laden 30 mile hammerfest. Ha!

But as I opened the updated weekend HBL ride page--there the advert did call out to me--especially since it led easily led folks into thinking the Public Division race might be, ahem shall we say, an easy fun filled endeavor to participate in with an ultimate purpose of seeing if one would like racing bikes on the road.

So the pre ride pasta feed was down in the famed Honolulu Restaurant Row on Saturday evening.  Everyone had a good time picking up their race numbers, free t-shirt, conversing with friends, chowing down, and talking race strategy--as if that was to do good things and make Lances out of mere weekend pretenders.

Carbo load photos from 11 June:

       
                                                                                                                                            Sally/Michael           Devin

So after a good night's rest, Sunday morning arrived to the sound of alarm clocks going off at 0500.  The Public Division race started at around 0900.  Turns out there were some teams--feature that--entered in the public division--we are talking decked out in team kit teams here.  In my opinion such entities have no business racing anything other than Cat 5 or higher if it applies--Cat 5 even if it is there very 1st race!!  Needless to say most of these team members made away with the medals.

Now the gang I hang out with, we may call ourselves a team--but that's for fun--mainly we ride for fun and the occasional sprint  for our constrained definition of competition.  We do have 1 guy on team Cambo but usually he rides with us if we're riding.  Today instead of going by our usual moniker, we decided to change our name to Team Creek due to the fact that Bruce was bothered by a creek emanating from somewhere upon his steed's body, and my hardest gears always protest when chosen by emitting an annoyingly audible squeek.

So Devin (Cambo guy) raced up toward the front for likely half the race when he found a person of interest to use as an excuse to give his shot weary legs a rest.  He limped in beat twice over from what I understand (wink) at the back of Team Creek.  Bruce was up a ways for the 1st 5 or 6 laps also although we didn't at the time know it was only by a minute or less.  Dan and I tried riding together most of the race although there were 5 and 10 minute periods occasionally where one of us would get out in front by a maybe a minute. Dan and I caught a small pace line about half way in which enabled us to rest and feel recharged for the last couple of laps.  We slowly reeled in some of the lonely lost souls who were caught in no man's land.  

The rejuvenation enabled us to catch Bruce around lap 6 or 7 and we rode most of the way together during the rest of the race.  The wind was fierce along Roosevelt Road and pretty much we dawdled along at 15 MPH for that stretch, where in general, we rode the other stretches between 22 and 25 getting up to speeds over 30. Right after the last long wind buffeted stretch was successfully navigated I felt the need to crank it up a notch for the final 3/4 mile.  Dan and then Bruce were just seconds behind finishing and then Devin sauntered in taking a lengthy cool down spin along the course (so as to avoid the inevitable scrutinization of what happened to a Cambo Team member I suppose).

All in all it was painful during the first 3 and a half laps--laps 2 and 3 were agonizing.  I thought I might wanna quit after 4 or 5 laps---but then when I realized my trusty teammates were there to suffer with me--and the legs started firing on all cylinders--it wasn't so bad.  In fact it turned out to be a fun event.  I would, I guess after all, consider doing a public categorized road race again.  Good job to Cambo,  the main organizers of the event.

None of Team Creek finished last. My final stats:  including the very short probably 30 second cool down at the end during which I forgot to unhook the computer:   1 hour, 32 minutes, 40 seconds, 30.59 miles, 19.8 MPH avg spd, 32,1 MPH max spd.

Race pictures 12 June, Old Naval Air Station-Barber's Point:

Team Creek         start/finish          Dan and Carol        Devin            Dan joins a           Dan and Pete     Bruce finishing
 pic by Carol                                                                                             paceline

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