The Spring Classic

After careful consideration and after several "you know it's fast don't you" and after several other "you know they won't wait for you" and after Joe mentioning that I should skip the first one, I decided to do the spring classic. The spring classic is a 55 mile loop around Philadelphia:
It goes through some off-road sections including parts of pennypack and wissahickon so some people bring cyclocross bikes. The night before, I was debating whether I should bring my cyclocross bike (29 pounds) and put slick tires on it, or bring my roadbike (23 pounds). I wanted to be able to keep up so I decided on the roadbike. This decision was made even after ex-bike shop manager, Eric, told me I would ruin the roadbike I am trying to sell. I was kind of nervous about the off-road sections because I know I was in a group of extremely avid mountain bikers. Mountain biking is also very new to me.

I leave my house at 9:20am to meet Joe to ride to Chestnut Hill (the start). The ride started off with over 20 people, ended with 11. I was doing pretty good through the offroad sections. I lost a water bottle; it popped out and someone ran over it. We had 2 tubular pinch flats. I got a flat, and then my tube was pinched between the tire and the wheel and blew through the side wall of my tire. Charlie makes a boot out of a stick, cliff bar wrapping, and tape from his seat post. I rode on this all the way from pennypack to George's house in NoLibs to get an old tire so I could finish my first spring classic. George and I raced to go meet everyone at the constitution center. Everyone had some pretzels. And then we continued on west river where we started a pace line. We got to manayunk and climbed the wall (like at mile 45 of the course, my mile 60). When I was climbing the wall, it started to turn into a race. I climbed it at a good pace (it was actually my first time up the manayunk wall), and then we had to descend down Hermit's Lane (offroad section) and that's where 5 of the guys passed me. When Charlie and I were finishing, I told him, "the end is hard" and all he said was "yeah, I think I'm going to puke".

All in all, when I got to the finish, I felt really accomplished. All these people told me I wouldn't be able to do it, but I did. I didn't crash in the offroad sections, I rode with the sidewall of my tire blown away at 40 psi with one water bottle, and even when the thought crossed my mind that my apartment is only a few blocks away, I kept going. I got home at 5:30pm. It was an epic day.