Let me take you back to sat and we can walk through the weekend. Sat morning me and Andrew Steelman (a.k.a. Andy) woke up in the morning and packed up all our gear and loaded the bikes on top of his car and set out!! We had a wonderful time in the car goofing off and getting excited about the wonderful event that we were going to be apart of. Well we got to San Jose and pulled up to the Hilton and checked in and took the bikes and our bags to our room. Now it was time to go and check in!! we go searching for the event center which was attached to the hotel. It took us a little while but we found it!! we went in and i had to pay the rest of what was left for my $250 cause i forgot to help my boss with making a donation. Then we went and picked up our packets full of goodies and our number tags. After this we go right out side the event center doors were our wonderful team captin Pam Whitehead had a table distributing the team Triumph jersey's and T-Shirts.
Thanks for all the hard work you put in Pam you did a great job and i wish i would have been my normal non shy self. Its ok though cause i will see you next month at R.F.A.R.
after all this we headed up to the room and started tuning and cleaning our bikes up for the big day. All of the sudden i realized i forgot my knee brace and trying to be a tough guy that i am not lol i was telling Andy i will be ok without it. Well he did what most best friends would do he told me come one lets go get one. so we did we went to the mall and found a sports authority and i bought me a better one than i had at home.
Well it was getting about dinner time after we got the knee brace so we decided to go to California Pizza Kitchen where we did not get pizza. instead it got thai linguini w/ chicken and a new castle.
When the stomach's were full we headed back to the room to finish working on our bikes pin up our jerseys that were printed for us buy our great sponsor blamelessclothing.com.
after this we went to bed cause we were going to have a early morning!!
Now we are at the big day Sunday morning at 5am. Andy and i get ready and head downstairs for breakfast. we had oatmeal and banana's. then we headed up to the room to get our spandex and jerseys on, grab our bikes and gear and head down to take our team picture.
right after team picture it was time to get in the lanes.
we had 3 people in front of us at at the start!!
after we all got in our lanes and got settled and it was getting closer to go time they brought out Lance Armstrong to give a few words before we set out!!
Then he rolled out on his bike and we all took off!! Andy and I had a rough day ahead. It was one of the best days of my life though. I knew i was there for a reason and it was way better than the pain i would put my body through. Thank you Andy for making me get a knee brace i would not have made it without.
Me being the Geek i am turning into and with the request from Jerad Hill i brought my phone with me and Twittered along the way when i could. Which was cool cause it updated my facebook status and let alot of my friends know how we were doing!!
you can follow me at http://twitter.com/llightner and Jerad at http://twitter.com/jeradhill
The first 30 miles was great had a ton of energy legs felt strong and there was a great little downhill section where i could have ended the day. I kinda forgot i was not mountain biking and didn't make a turn and ended up going through a pile of leafs and up on a dirt embankment. I forgot how dangerous this is on a road bike untill a fellow rider rode up asked if i was ok and told me that was a nice save.
In the next section Andy and I decided we would ride with a group of guys that was rolling out of the power stop. little did we know they were averaging between 22 and 24mph and we were avg 15-18 at this point. we rode with them for quite a while. it was about 13 miles then we fell of and slowed down cause we knew we had to save some energy!!
At mile 56 we pulled into another powerstop and took a significant break cause in the next 15 miles we had metcalf the hill from the devil himself!! This hill got the best of alot of the riders. Alot of people just could not peddle up it and had to walk. I personally walked about 100 ft up it and then was like thats it i can do this! and finished the hill strong. (killed my knee but i did it) Andy rode the whole way. this hill was crazy it was a 12% grade for 1.8 miles straight. well I guess we can say the hill really tried Andy we were 1/3 of the way up when he noticed his front wheel was flat. This is the reason we cary tools and extra tubes and a pump with us. luckly I was able to stop one of the S.A.G. wagons and get a floor pump so we could get him to perfect tire presure.
Well when we made it to the top of the hill (mile 70) there was a power stop where i took off my knee brace to let my knee breath for a moment then we picked up a spare tube and headed on our way. We had one more hill to climb not too bad then a long downhill back to flat land about 15 miles from the finish. We stopped at the last power stop at mile 91 and then we headed off with the little energy we had left.
Then we crossed the finish like on the survivor side opps. but the main thing was we made it!!
i called a few people afterwords and one of the people i called was Kristen Chacon. Her family did the 5k ride in honor of there Dad who is fighting cancer right now. When i was on the phone with her i hear Kevin (Kristen's Dad) in the background ask her to tell us thank you. At that moment all the time money and effort that i put into this event was worth it.
I want to give a special thanks to everyone who supported Andy and I weather it was encouragement, prayer, or financially. You really were not supporting us at all you were helping us support the cause.
Andy and I have decided we are going to do this event again next year and i encourage everyone to take part.
Next ride is coming up and this is a family event cause you ride as short or as far as you want.
August 23 in folsom check out RAFR.org
