In short, Team Aprimo won Division 3 of the Corporate Challenge Cycling event!
I was part of a 5 person team to participate on behalf of Aprimo in the 6.05 mile time trial. I was the only girl, but that was ok. Each team had to have a girl. I guess so it would be fair? Whatever. I was lucky because my teammates were all avid cyclists. We went out on a warm up ride and I knew Aprimo's chances were good when they were hitting 20 on this warm up. I was sucking wind, but I also do not ride anymore. As I was trying to catch up, a bee hit my hand in between my thumb and index finger and stung me. It hurt. I had not been stung by a bee since I was, like, 7. I flicked the bee off and then had to pull the stinger out of my hand. It swelled minimally, but hurt quite a bit. One of my teammates had a bee sting kit in his car, which consisted of a pre-soaked pad to rub on the sting. It didn't help much. It hurt all the way up to the time I was on the starting line getting ready to begin my TT, then the stinging just stopped.
I got going and hit 20 pretty easily and decided to maintain instead of completely wearing myself out. There was a decent headwind to deal with. I got down in my drops and pressed on. Mile 1 was the longest mile of the race. I kept watching my computer and seeing the tenths tick by...so slowly. I was going 20-21...come on! After mile 1, I got more focused on the course and making sure I did not make a wrong turn. I am so capable of making wrong turns. I thought the volunteers could have done better at pointing out directions. My guess is that they assumed we all knew the course. Ha! At one point, at an intersection, a cop car was perpendicular to the road dead ahead of me. I slowed to yell at the cop for directions. I was to go straight, and avoid the car...silliness. Anyways, I hovered around 19-21 througout, slowing for turns. My upper thighs started to kill around 4 miles in. When I made the turn for the finish, I got out of the saddle and pressed up to 25...Alex was cheering for me :) I crossed with a 19.5 mph average. That is 1 mph faster than last year on a 1 mile longer course...that spells improvement.
I ended up 51st out of 114. I was the 7th female to finish out of 25...shucks. My teammates were 9th, 12th, 15th, and 27th! We won our division! :)
It was a fun time, minus the bee sting. I will definitely participate next year and hope for more improvement!
Sunday was the laziest day ever. We didn't do anything except a few errands and taking Kenda to the dog park.
Big race on this coming Saturday...
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