T1 and beyond

After a 7 min transition I was onto the bike, saw Gemma again on the exit of T1 (didn't stop this time).

In my mind at this point I was relieved to be clear of the swim, and know that I was an hour ahead of the swim cutoff time. I was also nicely relaxed on the bike, my heart rate was a nice 125, and in fact never got above 130 for longer than 30 seconds during the whole ride. My goal was to take it easy for the first half and see how I felt.

It was at this point I realised I couldn't be that bad a swimmer, as over the first 20miles I must have been overtaken by 200 odd people. Repeating the mantra in my head.. "crap swimmer" as they passed me (probably themselves saying crap biker!)

The florida ride is very flat and I tried to stay down in the aero position for as long as possible, and managed to keep this up for the first 40 odd miles. However at that point I'd had enough of constantly being aero so reguarly switched between the aero and bars position. (tended to switch whenever I was bored).

The countryside around PCB is fairly boring, lots of open spaces and empty lakes followed by little villages, it is fairly flat with quite a few rolling type hills.

Got my special needs around mile 50, read my inspirational message from Gemma, and was relieved that I had not needed to use any innertubes to this point. (Had left the PB&J sandwiches at home so no nice sandwich for me).

To this day I have only changed my inner tubes twice, I knew I could do it (albeit slowly) but was very worried that under race pressure I would take ages.

Just after special needs the topic of conversation between passing riders seemed to be, and "what was in your packed lunch, trade you for a sandwich?"

I continued my ride, knocking back gels and endurolytes like they were going out of fashion, followed by a clif bar every hour (managed that for 3 out of the 6 hours). This seemed to be working fine with no feelings of cramp until about mile 70, when I started to get some GI pains. Breathing in deeply seemed to feel uncomfortable as well. Not sure why this was but I got it into my head it was caused by the gels and I stopped taking on the gels. I'm sure this caused me issues later.

The bike is just endless and you end up just waiting to see the next 10 mile marker, the roads are hit and miss, with some sections really nice, others being really rough. My bike speedo not working for distance really didn't help either. (I have a wireless speedo and it reguarly drops out, from looking at that you would think I cycled 87 miles, rather than the 112).

The bike was pretty un-eventful, no punctures, no crashes, just boredom (please stay like that for future races). From about mile 80 I just wanted it over. Reaching mile 100 was such a nice sight (this then became my longest ride ever), and I flew down the final few miles along the sea front.

Again Gemma was waiting for me at the dismount line and I felt pretty good at this point.

My average speed was 17.21mph, and I was really happy with that.

From speaking with other people they said the wind was alot stronger in the second half, but I can't say I noticed. Maybe I was on a sheltered part of the course or just orientated differently to the wind.

Into T2, with a bike time of 6hrs 30.