What an Amazing Race

Good old Rhinelander, it was my home town till I was two years old. I still remember the first year of racing there with the marathon suffer fest. After Iola I had some pretty high expectations for myself, and considering what happened during the race I am very pleased.

We had four guys from the flyers in the 19-24 wave (Andy, Scott, Ethan, and yours truly). I really didn't know what to expect from the other three, but I really wanted to beat all of the. I especially wanted to beat Andy after he beat me with no problem last year regularly. I shook hands with all the lead guys in the start shoot before Don said Gooo (I thought that that was very proper) I probably had the best start ever, as I was in the top ten of our wave for about two miles. While we were still on the gravel road, I noticed two guys hashing it out next to me. Both of them got closer and closer and before I knew it the guy to my left was pushing the wheels out from under me. So down I went. Made sure the Bike and I were still in working order, got up and went as quike as I could. I didn't evan look back to see who had hit me, all I remeber is seeing someone getting up. I feel very fortunate that it wasn't worse. I was ready to get run over by all the people behind me going full bore.

So Andy, Scott and Ethan are gone, and I'm on an adrenaline trip. I was more than a little mad, and I hammered through the field. I caught Scott about 3/4 through lap one and Ethan not too much later I think. Andy proved to be harder to catch and at this point I didn't think I had a chance. All of a sudden as it usually goes I see a flyer Jersey and I knew I had him. We exchanged our excuses and I passed him with about 3 miles to go. At that point I was starting to feel the affects of pushing so hard to catch up. I got on the logging road and couldn't go much over 15.The bridge area cam up soon after and I thought I saw Andy catching up. The roads coming back were brutal and again I couldn't go over 15mph. I pushed all the way to the finish and it turns out that the guy behind me was another flyer from a different age. I didn't recognize him, but thanked him for the extra motivation.

I went to the medics to get my knee cleaned, Shot the shit for a while and packed up for the long drive home. I went into work today and the leg didn't feel that great, so I took a half day off ( a definite perk of my job). Hoping I'll be in tip top shape for Wausua. Otherwise I was very impressed with how many Flyers Jerseys I saw in the finish. Now I just need to meet a couple more of you.

Cheers