Wednesday, May 24, 2006

may 21 was in manciano. another town in tuscany in the hills. we stayed at a small farm about 10 km away. the start line was in front of the farm, well 0km was in front, the start was in the town. so the morning of we had to hitch a ride to the town to start and get on our way. it was a hot day, scorching 32 degrees and the course was long long hills one after another. despite my 1km/hour drop in speed i was riding with the big dogs the entire race, and i was even pulling their group most of the way too. the race was 170km long which is about 115 miles. a guy named massimilian Lelli put it on, he is a former pro.
some of the climbs were so hard cause they went on for almost 25 km. but in the end i found that i was keeping up with everyone. the group i was with was lazy though and nobody wanted to pull me and help so i ended up doing alot of the work. if we sat back and lazed then the people behind us would catch up and i wanted to finish faster so i just went and went.
we went through the saturn hot springs, and a town called pitigliano which is like cliffs for town walls. most of that countryside down there was feilds and grains and little trees, so it was really windy.
Well to end the boring story of the race, when we got to the 2 km mark my legs started to falter and by 1km to go i had lost all composure and almost collapsed and died. the group of 23 people left me to die, and i barely made it up the hill to finish in 55 place and 13th among the elite... well i wish i could havel lasted and finished in the top 25, but maybe next week.
I waited a few minutes then robyn came in soon after. she had pretty much the same death experience as me, only she had it a little sooner. She made her way up the last hill to see me and wanted to collapse next to me, but instead she flew across the finish passing a few more guys in the process. She came back over to me and cried, then i felt like crying. Its funny how the tough races can mess with your head and emotions...

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