El Tour de Tucson - CycleRoad Race

This was my first century ride. I had been training primarily for the Soma Half Iron tri for the past several months, so biking took a back seat to swimming. I had only gotten up to 65 miles in training and that proved to be a bit of a problem. I was going to ride this the entire way with my friend from work, but we got seperated not long after the first wash crossing. (Marachi band was awesome, BTW) I ended up riding alone for a very long way. I just couldn't seem to find a pack of riders that were similar to my speed. I ended up riding along with several of my fellow Intel employees. After the second river crossing, I was on the steep climb and at the top a lady was trying to get somebody to take a can of Coke from here. I snagged that thing and stuck it in my jersey pocket for later. At mile 65, my left hamstrings cramped up hard. I was really worried. I got off the bike and dug out my endurolytes and took a few of those. My hamstring settled down after a bit and I kept on trucking. I got another cramp about mile 85 and it again cleared up after a few minutes. Finally I was on the final 25 miles of the ride on Silverbell...the worst road imaginable. Uphill (gradually), into the wind and on rough roads. I couldn't wait for that to be over. I really wanted to get my gold medal, but it was going to be close. On the last several miles, I ended up riding with two other Intel employees that I had recently met while organizing our team. We decided to finish the ride together and cross the line at the same time. By the end, if I stopped pedaling, my hamstrings would cramp immediately, I just had to keep moving. It was nice to finish with my co-workers. My official finish time was 6:01:08.11. You had to finish under 6 hours to qualify as 'gold', so I just barely missed it. At one point, I had gotten stopped by police (along with a lot of other cyclists) to allow traffic to pass. So, my Garmin auto-paused at this point, while the race clock kept ticking. Had I not got stopped at that traffic light, I probably would have gotten gold. However, I probably would have gotten gold if I had done a few more 80-100 mile training rides.

I didn't stop at any of the aid stations. I carried all necessary nutrition and drink with me. It might have been a good idea to pull over and eat some solid foods and at least give my legs a quick break. Also, since I don't have a dedicated road bike, I had to use my cyclocross bike with road tires on it. It worked pretty well, but on the parts of the road where you can really hammer it, I was spinning out since the large chain ring on my cross bike is smaller than on your standard road bike.

Reunited with my friend from work that started out with me. He finished it in an amazing 5:30! I took that can of Coke that the lady handed me at mile 55 and drank that and it was pretty good. I can't believe I carried it for half the race. I wasn't able to beat Barry Bonds (SF Giants) but I was able to beat his lesser known cousin, David Bonds. It was a very cool event and I hope to put together another team from work next year.


Lack of long training rides, Limitations of riding my cross bike.


This was a very cool event. There's really something for everybody.