Mt.Ham classic – My first race ever

by Elizabeth Traver

I achieved my goal which was to simply finish — I don’t want to give excuses , or at least not too many but I did have a lot going against me (heavy ass bike is definitely one of them). The race was 38 miles long with 2200′ feet of climbing and I finished it in about 2h15m … I know for a lot of you this probably seems slow but for me it’s astonishing and I’m proud of myself, or should I say I am proud of my legs.

The race started at 8:45, we left the house at 7:15 and I thought it would take 45 minutes or so to get there, giving me plenty of time to warm up — Well, we get there at 8:30, I still had to buy my one day license and use the toilet … I head over to the toilet line and the bell begins to ring …no toilet for me and no warming up – About an hour into the race and I finally felt like I had warmed up and that I was ready to go – I stayed with the pack for just a few moments in the beginning and as soon as the climbing began me and a handful of girls got dropped. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. A few of us stayed together and I even passed someone on a descent (one of my better cycling skills) but she caught up within moments of reaching the bottom — I tried to work together with the few that we were but I just couldn’t keep up and eventually I was dropped all by myself I almost puked and thought about quiting, being in last(well, one girl got a flat so technically I wasn’t last but that’s a pretty sad reason to not finish last) and all …who cares, right? But i kept reminding myself why I was there – It eventually felt just like a nice ride on a Sunday morning all by myself, new scenery and new challenges.

It took me the entire day to recover, I have never been in soo much pain in my entire life and I can’t wait to do it again! My cyclers cough kept on into the later evening.

I need to get a heart rate monitor/cyclometer (I used to have one a few years back when I really didn’t need it and now I need one and don’t have one) –

Thanks for listening!

And thanks for all of the pre-race advice!!

Peace
Elizabeth Traver

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