My Bike Flew Down to Puerto Rico- Racing Las 100 de La Parguera Mountain Bike race

At the start line of "Las 100 De La Parguera"

If you are a passionate cyclist, be it road biker or mountain biker, you may have wondered what it is like to travel with your bike and ride in a distant land. To go out of one's comfort zone and do something that you've never done before is one of the most rewarding experiences you can have as a person. While I have ridden bikes abroad I have never done an event outside of where I live in Texas. 

The first time I heard of Las 100 de La Parguera mountain bike race was eight years ago, to be exact. I just so happened to be visiting family in Puerto Rico and was spending the day in the quiet little coastal town known as La Parguera. I stumble across the official starting line with a guy in a registration booth next to it. I ask what all of the commotion is about and he tells me it is a mountain bike race, the first of it's kind in Puerto Rico. I get really excited and ask if there was any way that I could rent a mountain bike, but neither him nor I knew how to get a hold of one. The race was only a few days away and a couple of days before I had to go back home, so I concluded that I was not prepared to undertake the race on such short notice.  The winner of the race won a new bike and that year 300 people participated in the event. 

Fast forward eight years later. This event is now one of the premiere races of the Caribbean with over 2,000 participants and racing teams coming from as far as Dominican Republic. The kinds of bikes that I saw were almost all top of the line racing bikes, some which I had not seen even stateside . It seemed like everybody was riding some kind of carbon fiber wonder. I saw Treks and Specialized S-Works all over the field, many of these bikes costing up to 10 grand. Needless to say, the participants took their riding very seriously.

I wanted to do this ride before I got any older, before any kind of life change or health change prevented me from ever doing it. It may sound like I worry too much about that in my blog posts, but let me explain. I'm currently dealing with some kind of knee tendinitis on both knees, injuries brought about from getting back into skateboarding for the last two years. Also, as time goes by, it gets harder to find the time to train for events like this. Knowing both of these things, I did not want to keep putting it off any longer. I wasn't in it to win it, as I knew I neither had the fitness level, correct bike for the race or home field advantage like the locals that knew the route well.

I opted for the 50 kilometer route, which ended up being 57 kilometers or 35 miles when it was all said and done. I finished in a time of 3 hours and 10 minutes, with a moving pace of 2 hours and 54 minutes. I was 155th out of 313 in my age category (30-39) and 758 overall out of the 2017 participants, so not first, not last.  

I believe in being a life time athlete, as long as health and physical limitations allow it. I also believe you don't have to be a professional to have lifetime achievements in the sport you practice. Making memories such as these will last longer than any win I could ever have. Hopefully my kids will grow up knowing that their dad wasn't just some couch potato. Its important to have all kinds of goals in life. My goal is to stay active for as long as I can.

The last hill of the race, just before the finish line