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Out of the water, time for a quick shower to get rid of some of the salt, try to get into my racing top as quick as possible (with a little help of a volunteer), have some other volunteers put some sunscreen on me
and then go search for the bike. All in all, my transition was five seconds faster as last year, pretty good considering that my bike was completely at the far end.
Riding up on Palani road is great. It is a hard climb, especially as you are barely on your bike, but the crowd is great, there are so many people shouting and screaming... You have to be careful though. You can blow
a large part of your race if you try to go to fast here. All was fine though and I tried to get into a good rhythm once on the Queen K. The first 30 km or so is quite nice, rolling terrain, not much wind and it is
still too early for the heat. However, when getting close to Waikoloa village, the wind was picking up and everybody was shifting towards the smaller gears. I was feeling good though, I was only annoyed about the
one or two riders who passed me on the right, to drop dead afterwards. They knew why they were passing on the right, that way they could pass me out of the wind. There as also a reasonable large group I passed who
were really not sticking to the drafting rules. They were riding with only about 1m between them. Fortunately, I was going fast enough to assure that they couldn't stay with me.
Once the end of the Queen K. was reached, it is time to get to the roads which reach the skies. Well, not quite, but there is more climbing to do once you pass the Seven Eleven. However, you could do this at a very
good pace as the wind was now coming from the side. This allowed me to ride quite fast, but it was difficult to drink. Try to stay upright and not being thrown from one side of the road to the other were quite a
challenge. Still, the heat was starting to pick up so drinking could not be missed! There was some extra refreshment though. A light drizzle fell down, which at first didn't even touch the ground (at least the road
was staying dry), but got a bit stronger closer to Hawi. Of course, the leading athletes started crossing us as well, and I was trying to figure out both my own position, and that of the other Belgian athletes. If I
counted correctly, Jean Moureau and Dirk Van Gossum were in 26th and 27th place, separated by less than a minute, and I was 80th. The leader (which must have been Norman Stadler) had quite a gap on the chasing pack.
It is a shame that Luc Van Lierde was not racing.
read on
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