#738
It was hot, I remember it was hot. It hadn't rained for what seemed like months and the ground was hard as chiseled rock. I was hot, my mouth as parched as the landscape, as dry as old bones.
From the nerves or from the weather, from the weather or from the nerves. Fifty four kilometres, more than two thousand six hundred entrants, my first big race. It was hard to tell.
Swept along at the start, going at a crazy pace, ignoring my plans. It was obvious it was the nerves.
At twenty kilometres the first slow puncture. Not slow enough for a pump, I had to change it. I had no choice. Everything stood still except the other racers. Hundreds of them sliding past.
But I was back, I was racing again. On a charge and making up lost ground, down but not defeated.
And then the disaster repeats itself.
In an acacia grove waiting for a replacement tube, a spectator again. A change but not a clean one and I puncture again soon after. Rinse and repeat. Somebody help.
They do eventually because we're all riders, even racers. I'm struggling to understand my luck even before it happens one more time. Five hundred metres out. Now it's time to push and run.
I finish on foot. I don't want to know where, it no longer matters because when all is said and done, I am not a number.
#399
He was 20 years younger and he beat me two weeks earlier but this day was my day, this course was my course
#6027
In amongst the masses of riders herded into the starting pens like cattle, ready to go on the ‘b’ of the bang.
#27
And then, suddenly, „boom“. I regained consciousness in the ambulance later. I couldn't remember anything about the fall.
#112
Alpine skiing was the first competitive sport I ever participated in. And I was coming from an island where there are no ski slopes.
#1047
Base miles and big-ring drills, diet and core strength sessions. Attention to detail in every aspect of training and racing life.
#80
On the map, I’m just a dot from a GPS signal - a pair of coordinates and a ticking clock.
