Bakin In Bakersfield, or Bacon In Bakersfield Day 1

Hi all!

Just wanted to check in from the depths of h*ll (or wait, is that just
Bakersfield, CA) to report on the women Chickens representing here at
the Kern Co. Women's Stage race.
The good news is that I survived the first day of my second Kern.

I am kind of tired and still dehydrated (even after drinking 1 recovery
drink, 2 water bottles, 5 gatorades, about 5 glasses of water at dinner,
and 2 diet cokes (ok, so the diet coke didn't help, but it sure tasted
good...). It was the worst I have ever felt on a bike. The temperature
was well over 100, although I'm not sure how much! I didn't really want
to know. And it was windy, too. The wind was so hot, however, that it
felt like being in a convection oven (I can only assume that's what
being baked feels like). Although on a good note, I accomplished the
following:

1. Finished.
2. Didn't throw up (came mighty close though)
3. Didn't blow up/pass out/ride off the road
4. Achieved my max heart rate at the finish (201)
5. Ran a higher avg. heart rate than I thought previously possible
without blowing up... (189-my threshold is 167)
6. First time I felt like was racing in a sauna (devil's punchbowl last
year was close though)
7. Didn't drop my chain this year!
8. Got 4th.

And on a great note, Susie won the TT, and is sitting in 1st
place!!!! She remarked to me (before she found out she won, mind you),
"On a scale from one to ten, this race was a zero,"
to which I replied,
"Zero, you're being too nice, it's definitely a negative 10,"
to which she said "you WOULD say something like that, being the engineer,"
to which I think I actually started TALKING about negative numbers! I
really was beat.
Anyway...you get the idea.

She has a tad over a minute on me, and with us sitting in 1st and 4th,
we'll have our work cut out for us tomorrow. Tomorrow we have a 50 mile
RR in the morning (with 7 time bonus opportunities), and a 13 mile
Gibraltar-style hillclimb in the afternoon. We'll work hard to
represent Team Chicken Ranch, at least until we drop from heat exhaustion!

Good luck to all you chickens racing Mountain Bikes this weekend! I
hope the heat spares you a little...our forecast up here is not kind.

Ciao!
Kimberly