My first coach told me, “Hilary, you will never have a perfect race. There will always be something that goes wrong.” That statement resonated with me. After this past weekend, I realized he was right and things don’t always happen the way you planned them!
Pool Triathlon
I was planning on doing a pool triathlon with EventPower LI. I had never done a pool triathlon and was so excited about the challenge. I picked up my number and wanted the event to get going!
Bike Ride Instead
When I woke up Saturday, I was surprised to see my “old friend” come to town. I wasn’t expecting it. It was a week early! So I immediately reached out to my coach who suggested the ALS bike tour which was 25 miles. I reached out to a work friend, Ashley Saurman, and asked if she wanted to go. Surprisingly, she said she would.
Sunday morning came, Ashley came over without her bike. I thought she could use my daughter’s bike except it didn’t fit on the rack. So, I called up my husband, Brian and asked him if we could use his road bike. He said sure. I pumped up all the tires put them on my Saris Bike Rack and left. The event was more than an hour away in Stony Brook.
I didn’t want to go too fast because the bikes were on the back of my small car. I was a little weary that they would fall off. We stopped at some point and put bungy cords to keep the bikes in place.
At Stony Brook
We got out to Stony Brook at just about 12 pm. That’s when the ride was taking place. I ran into the bathroom, Ashley followed me. We were told to follow yellow arrows through Stony Brook and around the school and through various surrounding towns. Once we were on our way, I noticed that Ashley was not steady on the bike. We were riding with traffic and I was actually getting nervous. There was no bike lane in site. I shouted out to Ashley, “do you want to turn around? Maybe we should do the 10 mile tour. It didn’t go out yet.”
She agreed. But when we got to the car, I was ready to leave. I was thinking the same thing will happen with the 10 mile tour and both Ashley and I didn’t feel comfortable.
Ended up at Tobay
So we packed the cars up and headed back to Long Beach, except we made a detour at Tobay, where we rode the 17.5 mile trail from Tobay to Cedar Creak and back. The going to Cedar Creak was easy. We were flying with no effort. But coming back was so windy. I kept pushing my Trek Silque and it wouldn’t go. The wind was blowing against us. I felt as if we were in a wind tunnel that would never end. I tried to get into an aero position but that didn’t help much. Nothing did. We just fought through it until we reached the end.
When we got into the car, I thought, at least I did something and even though I didn’t do the Event Power LI triathlon benefiting Family & Children Services and I didn’t ride the ALS ride, my donations went to two great causes.
