Bike – Day 13 (The Dehydrator, Duncan, Oklahoma, USA)

Wow, what a day! I just returned from the 43km fun ride. I don’t know from where I should start my story. At this very moment I’m feeling pretty tired and sleepy, so if my story started to be a nonsense one, that means my fingers are typing with my eyes closed.

Yesterday I didn’t go cycling, I just went to pick up the fun ride packets and at night I ate a lot of foods. Terboroi sekejap, carbo loading punya pasal. Just when I wanted to shut down my laptop and go to sleep, someone YM-ed me. Oklah, layan kejap. At last, I slept at around 12am.

This morning, I woke up at 6am. Get prepared, eat lots of breakfast. Boroi lagi sekali. Loaded my bike inside the car trunk and by around 7.30am I arrived at the starting location. Its summer here and you can already feel the heat even at that early morning. Parked my car, and started to eat two Powerbars inside the car. One for each leg, I guess. Haha.

The first Powerbar tasted good. When I was about to finish the second bar, I felt weird. Overdosed power kot.

At 8am, the racers started their journey. We, the “riders” (fun ride) were flagged off 5 minutes later. I’m not really sure how many turned out this time, but they are lots of people with colourful jerseys and bikes. It made me felt very humble when looking at their Cervelos, Cannondales, Treks and lots of ntah-apa-brand-aku-pun-tak-tau. Some say there were around 500 people participated this year. Anyway, keeping my mind in the positive mode I started riding and followed the pack at the front. All the riders who are doing the 27, 53 and 69 miles had to go on the same route for about 15miles and then we the 27miles riders took different route. The first half of the route has lots of rolling hills, it was tough. Luckily my musuh tradisi, the headwind, was absent today. Thank God.

I tried to maintain medium-high cadence throughout the ride. My legs didn’t feel tired this time, breathing was controllable except for the time when I had to do standing climb up two of the very sharp hills. Speed was about 16-17km/h when I did the climbs, but there was one time I clocked 53.5km/h when going down a hill. It felt really good, rasa macam naik bullet train dua tayar.

I’m not sure why, but most of the times (after the first few miles) I rode alone. I didn’t get into any pack. Solo-molo je. I stopped once for a short break at 25km mark, teguk setengah botol Gatorade, and then continued cycling. Fortunate enough, after the 25km mark, the route was 70% flat.

I set my speedometer to see only current speed and average speed. And I depended on my IM Timex watch to see roughly how long have I cycled. Based on the average speed I was doing, I calculated that I could do this ride below 2 hours time. Then, after about 1.5hrs I came through a familiar location. Eh, dah nak sampai ke ni? I cycled a bit more and a few minutes later I arrived at the finishing point. YEAYY…! I finally finished it. Big smile was on my face.

Did some leg stretching, cooled down my self a bit and then I went to the pool for a relaxing few laps of swim. It’s like doing a reverse triathlon, haha. After that, I joined the others for lunch. I couldn’t eat much, just took one baked potato, a full plate of cold and juicy watermelons and lots of water.

During the lunch, I had a good chat with a 77-years old pakcik who also did the 27miles fun ride. He said he used to do 100miles ride few years back and he is going to enter a 50miles ride in October. Wa respect sama lu, pakcik!

As a conclusion, it was such a good experience to cycle with lots of people. I could see some cool bikes, great jerseys, young and old people having fun on their bikes, and I learned that it makes such a loud noise when one clip or unclip their cycling shoes. Furthermore, this is my first time. Good start, good ending, and hopefully more good things in the future of my sports life.

Result of Day 13 (Saturday)
Distance: 43km
Time: 1hr 39min
V Max.: 53.5km/h
V Ave.: 26.1km/h

So, what’s next?

I may need to slow down on cycling since I have to do some studying for my job training. I have two pre-requisite self-study courses to be completed before I go for a big training course in the middle of August. Kalau makan Powerbar, otak boleh jadi power tak?

Or, shall I start running? Cepat, cepat... sapa nak racun aku start running pulak?