Galena Tri: The Bike

Once I made it through T1 to the mounting zone, I felt pretty good and excited to get on my way. But that quickly changed when I tried to go up the hill directly after mounting. It was not fun. One thing I would like to say about Galena is that it is really freakin hilly. The hills aren't normal hills, they are like hills on crack. It seemed like right when you got done with one, another was directly after it. Below is the elevation chart taken from my garmin when I got past the 1st hill.

The first couple of miles were spent getting my body acustomed to the bike. At mile 2, while going up one of the hills on crack. I was struggling pretty bad. When another biker got on the side of me and said "put it in a lower gear", and I replied "how do you put it in a lower gear again?" We both laughed and then i was like "seriously". So he helped me and I was then ready to go. It was great. The rest of the miles just flew by.

For the remainder of the race, i ended up putting my head down and just peddled up the hills which i found to work. My garmin also said that my max speed was 32mpg. Which i thought was pretty cool.

One part of the race that I couldn't wait to get to was the "Jesus Saves" sign on the side of a barn denoting the half way point. Which i found to be ironic. See, if you didn't make it to that sign by 12:15, then you would have been swept from the course. Luckily, I was done with the entire tri by that time. But when I did see that sign, I definetly had a giant smile on my face.

I definetly had a good time on the bike despite the hills. I stopped thinking about what was next and I just enjoyed myself. Galena is a beautiful place to bike. Once I got to recreation park I heard a familar sound coming from the crowd. It was barb and a couple of ladies cheering for me. They really got me pumped for the run. But once I did see barb, I did tell her that I would never do another tri again. (That is a lie).

Once I got to T2, I found that barb set all my stuff up for me. She even left the spray biofree out for me. What a good wife.

The 16.8 miles on the bike took me 1:30:11 which i'm happy with for my first tri. With my transition from the bike to the run being 2:40.

Even though I kicked some ass, i just have to say, I HATE HILLS!