The Lyle Pearson 200

On Tuesday, June 2, I got a call from Tyler; who told me that a second teammate of his in the Lyle Pearson 200 (map) was out with an injury.  He said that he'd suggested me as an alternate.  I agreed, flattered, to do what I could.  With only four days notice, I could do little to prepare but rest.  The other team members had been seeking out hills and riding intervals for months.  I'd done nearly zero intervals since the Broome TT, and my only intense riding was at the only Hubbard Time Trial I'd managed to ride so far.  The only appreciable hill I'd ridden this year (truly ever on a road bike) was on the Arbon Valley ride.  

Anyway, my total climbing for the entire Arbon Valley ride was less than or equal to the elevation gain on my first leg of today's ride.  Whew!  But I rode it and did pretty well.  A real highlight was seeing Mike, a friend from Skinny Tire, show up to drive along and whoop it up a little for us.  His cheering gave me a bundle of extra energy and took my mind off the pain for a short while, and I found myself going a couple MPH faster after our encounter.  Much appreciated, Mike - sincerely.  I'm smiling in the picture shown here only because I was so pleased to see you.  And here's the BIG highlight for the day: at the beginning of that leg, Daniel (my teammate) handed off the lead to me, and I was able to hand it off to Tyler.  And a little icing on that cake: John (another teammate - actually the guy whose place I took after he hurt his knee) said that the lead that we built up had people talking.  But as he quickly pointed out, "There comes a time when the hare knows that the hawk will catch him."  :)  The faster riders generally started later than the slower ones, so it was only a matter of time before the heroes would catch us.  A mechanical difficulty meant that Tyler relinquished the front spot on the following descent and our glory would not survive another stage - but that's okay because he's still alive.  :)

Anyway, moving on to my second leg . . . this one was from Banner Summit to Stanley - losing a total of about 650 feet in elevation.  It was one of the longest segments of the race - about 25 miles, and the first six miles or so was a significant but relatively gentle descent (less than 1%) that gave me momentum to carry through the rest of the leg, which undulates 18 more miles down to Stanley losing 400 more feet from the base of the descent.  About half-way along this leg, I felt my batteries draining and knew that I'd be useless on another leg (I was slated to participate with everyone else in the last leg).  Knowing that the others would be able to move faster on that last leg without me, I determined to blow everything I had left right where I was.  So I held my steady state until Stanley appeared before me, about two miles away.  Seeing my goal, I judged myself, gritted my teeth, and successfully emptied my tank in those last two miles en route to the transition.

There, I handed off the radio to Tyler, who had the unenviable task of riding the next leg (probably the longest leg) alone & into the wind.  I really got off easy in this race with my assignments.  Rod and Daniel are the two guys on our team that really deserve kudos - they both rode up & down Galena Summit and blew straight through the last transition area to pull us to the finish line while Tyler & I lounged in the truck (Tyler spent himself on his last solo leg too).

Results were just posted a while ago, and we finished in 31st place out of 69 teams.  Not bad at all.  Anyway, it was a great time.  I've already started work on assembling my own team for next year.