My Wife is My Best Friend

And in our first professional race, we got “the” silver medal! And now I can say that I rode in a professional race with Thomas Voeckler “finished before him” and got “the” silver medal. But there are a few caveats. There were options to ride 110km, 55km, or 15km. We chose to ride the 55km while Thomas Voeckler and probably all of the professionals rode the 110km. “The” silver medal is in quotes because while we did get “the” silver medal, but there were over 200 silver medals. Anyone who finished in the top third of the racers got a gold, second third got a silver and everyone else got a bronze. We were just glad to finish without any incidents.

We actually averaged 15.5mph over the 32 mile course which was our best speed by far for that distance. We frequently average under 14mph. However, we have never “raced” before and likely will never “race” again... we are riders, not racers.

The first picture below is pre-race, the second shows us with our silver medals, the video shows our friends Bill & Lynne from Chicago finishing the 110km race. They had previously tried to change to the 55km race, but somehow their request did not go through so they endured the 110km ride and did great. 

There was at least on accident on the course and we were thankful to have missed it. While the main peloton including the top professional riders was coming back along the course (it was an out and back course) several of them went down in a crash and spread out across the whole road. It caught one of our tandem riders on the outbound path and took them down as well. They were able to walk away from it with some pretty serious scrapes, but it looks like no broken bones. The high speed rider who was part of the collision coming toward them was not so fortunate and ended up with a broken arm. The tandem riders did have the front seat break off of their bike, but that is certainly easier to repair than an arm.

We will board the cruise ship on Monday —