Philippines 70.3 - Bike

So after a good swim for me it was on to the bike portion.  90k or 56miles. 

Quickly I realized one more problem, that being my bike computer wasn't working.  While not the end of the world I use it to determine the distance traveled, speed and my cadence.  It certainly helps when pacing oneself over this distance.  Oh well nothing I can do at this point.

The race was a two loop course over relatively flat terrain.  The one exception being this bridge you see in the first picture below.  Up and over that bridge was tough as it seemed straight up on a long steady climb.

 After the bridge it was out and back 2x, each time relatively straight allowing for decent speeds.  We went through a super long tunnel, where literally I had to pull my sunglasses down as it got so dark in their with them on you couldn't see anything.

Most of the roads were in good shape but there were areas heavily beat up thanks to container/cargo shipping that happens daily.  The good news was this course was completely closed to cars the day of the race, making for a safe environment.

I read in one post race recap that the bike was compared to the course at Kona, Hawaii where the Ironman world championships are held.  Specifically in the sense that it was extremely hot out on the bike and also because of some heavy winds causing speeds to be much higher coming back in than they were going out. 

The best part of this entire course by far was the outstanding crowd support.  It was reported the next day that there were over 25,000 people lining the streets cheering everyone from the pro's to the worst performing athletes!  There were sections of the bike that had crowds lined 2-3 deep cheering like crazy.  A small wave or a smile of acknowledgment from the competitors just fired everyone up even louder.

All in all I had a good bike portion and was well on my way to hitting the time goal that I set for this race...