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| 9mm Booger Picker |
Now that we had a team we needed a bike. A minor detail, I know. There was hear-say that bikes would be available to borrow. But what kind of bike that would be was a mystery. We sent out e-mail blasts and asked everyone we came across if they had or knew of a bike we could borrow. Come race morning, no joy. Looked like we were at the mercy of the rumor mill. At the race registration we ran into some Americans, from the Embassy, who were doing the race also. Apparently they had an extra mountain bike. However the rear derailleur didn't work. At that point we didn't care. If it had anything resembling two wheels we would take it. So 15 minutes before the start of the race we finally had our 35,000 pound, Schwinn, full suspension, 3 speed (bike had three rings on the crank), mountain bike. After a 10 minute test ride/warm up, I pronounced it, heavy. Now we were ready to race!!
Chief rocked the swim. He was probably one of the faster swimmers in the whole competition. So much so that folks were video taping him as he ticked off the laps. Chief gets done, I hand him some aqua and I run to my rusty steed. As I line up to start the bike leg the timer groups three of us together, to make timing easier. One of the guys is riding a nice Orbea carbon road bike. "Oh this guys is going to be a rocket ship", I thought. The timer sends us off and I am right behind Orbea dude. We start climbing a hill and I end up passing the guy. Then he passes me on the down hill. But wait a minute, big ass speed bumps coming up. I pass him and proceed to get massive air over the speed bumps. As I am airborne one of the local security guards starts clapping enthusiastically and then proceeds to salute me as I fly by. He never stopped clapping the entire race. Except when he was saluting. Orbea dude and I play this back and forth game for most of the first lap until my chain pops off at the start of the second lap. It took me a minute or so to fix my chain. But after that I never saw Orbea dude again. I managed to keep my lap time even on both laps. My time was 31:20 for the 16k with an average speed of 19 mph. And that is with the mechanical time included. I am happy with that considering the bike weighed a million pounds and I only had hard, medium, and ridiculously easy gears.
Chief finished up the race with a respectable 35 minute 8k run. In the end our time was good enough for second place in the team competition. We lost by only 2 minutes. Chief did the swim in 10:36, their time was 12 something. I completed the bike in 31:20 their time on the bike was 31 flat. However their rider was an Italian, wearing Italian kit, riding an exotic Italian carbon road bike. Yet he only gained 20 seconds on us during the bike. Hmmm.... Where they got us was the run, obviously. Our time was 35 minutes and some change. Their run time was 31 something.
Our sly little plan to get out of training failed miserably. Apparently there is this little thing that you can do. Its called rescheduling. And that is what they did. So come Monday morning there we were, booger pickers flailing around wildly, "Bang, bang!!"
