Today was the Hawaii State Road Race out at Pineapple Hill near Haleiwa. The last time that a HI State RR was held was in 2005 - Which I won while racing with a broken arm. As the saying goes "Excuses are like assholes - Everyone has one"... I woke up on Saturday morning with major lower back pain. Not sure why, but the right side of my lower back was killing me. Bad enough that I looked very stupid while grocery shopping and trying to lift the basket off the floor. I spent Saturday putting icy-hot on the sore area, soaking in a hot bath, using a heat pad... Anything that would make it feel better.

So, the race... The first 14.5 mile lap (5-lap race) was super mellow with no serious attacks. After a while David Lum and Mike from Tradewinds got a 30-45sec gap that no one seemed worried about chasing down. For whatever reason, Tradewind's tactic appeared to be blocking anyone trying to chase David and Mike, to the point that it got dangerous.

Going up Pineapple hill for the second time, we caught Mike, then David. Just as we caught David, one of the Tradewinds guys made an acceleration to David then sat up... So I attacked hard and quickly established a good size gap. I figured that now I'd established a gap, Tradewinds' blocking tactics were now redundant, and that there might be a little hesitation on who was going to head the chase - Helping my gap to grow.

Me heading up Pineapple hill solo.
Photo by Mike Proffitt.

I stayed away for about 13-14 miles and could see two riders trying to bridge up. I sat up a little to let them catch up as three is better than one. The riders the caught up were Tony Lang and Alex Eiler, and the first thing that Tony said was that we're all in different age groups so we should just work together. Seemed fine to me. No need to kill each other, just work well together and maintain the gap to the finish. That plan was going great for a lap, then Alex decided to ease back on his turns at the front... Eventually trying to drop Tony and I on the climb up Pineapple hill. As Alex wasn't eligible for the state championship and Tony was racing as a master, I decided to just let them go half way up the climb. My back was pretty sore and I didn't want to make it worse. No need for me to destroy my back chasing down guys that I'm technically not racing against.

SRM File. 3hr 15mins for 71.35 miles, Pavg 247w, Pnorm 282w, 2903kJ, and 21.9mph. 217.5 TSS.

At the awards, they decided to award me the silver medal for Snr Men 1/2/3... They hadn't even posted results - and not given any 15min period to protest any errors in the results. So, I stood there not really sure what to do, eventually walking over to get the medal. Yet again, I'm thrown into an ugly situation.

Right now, I don't know if I'll do any more road racing in Hawaii. I'm getting quite burnt out on many aspects of the island racing scene, where the officials don't always know the rules of what they're officiating, and prizes are minimal. 3rd place overall in a 70+ mile road race and my prize was.... non existent. I gave the medal back before I left. Something just isn't right with this picture.