Chris reflects on his pizza consumption

The hardest part for me was the new set of lights and the average speed being disrupted by this. I stopped counting at the pit stop where I had 111 laps registered (love that number) because I was nearly delirious with anger at my luck to be faced with failing due to traffic lights and my mantra of obeying the law. At 111 laps we had only gotten a total of 9 true green lights on this set going and coming, which means we had to stop 213 times!!!!!

We had lost over 1 hour 45 minutes just to those lights by 6am when the Police escort arrived (which was NOT planned, but proved to be the ultimate pace saver). These lights were torture because I had planned for over 4 months on only 2 lights and then they added the new ones 9 days before the start! What was disrupting the pace so severely is that both directions have a sensor that is being tripped to help someone turn right (across traffic in the BVI) and they have not fixed it yet…so even when only one car was out at 2am the light was turning red. The BVI is now so busy that there were always cars on the road, thus no green lights even at these late/early hours.

I had to go way faster/harder than I anticipated…over 5km/h more…which these days with my true lack of fitness was ridiculous for 3 hours let alone the 23 I took to do the 505k (actually 507). I had a really rough 5 hour patch from 11pm to 4am due to my continued idiocy about food choices (at 47 I realize I will never learn). I was doing well on the food front (14 ham and cheese sandwiches and endless slices of chocolate banana bread washed down with Gatorade and water at various rates) up until ~10:00pm when I ate pizza.

One slice of pizza may have created a milder challenge, but I ate 4 slices in 15 minutes (like any true Ghiorse). Thirty minutes before this rather dubious choice of food for hard exercise, I was chowing down on food left in my pocket, chocolate banana bread, washed down with Gatorade….yeah a pretty volatile mix….I mean I can barely read this and believe it…and I did it to myself.

I actually put on weight, probably water weight from shock, but still impressive to be able to say that considering my heart rate monitor showed I had burned over 18,000 calories…original projection was 15,000, but due to harder pace and MUCH higher heart rate average 167! Planned to do this with an average of under 140

Anyway, sheer genetic pigheadedness and a great amount of swearing at the lights and all my team riders dutifully towing me along at a pace high enough to remain on target, as “I threw up at the back of the bus” (means sitting on and out of the wind), got me to my goal. The police escort for the last 6 hours (5 for me to reach my goal) proved the saving grace and also to build my confidence that I did calculate correctly my ability to ride at a certain pace…being able to cruise through the lights made the last hours on the bike easy, although I will admit I just wanted to be done with it by then.