So maybe I didn't need to have such a bad night's sleep last night. I came into this race thinking that I could win--thinking that we could demonstrate some of the progress that we'd made with the vehicle, but when I looked at the competitors, they all looked so strong. I realized it wouldn't be so easy. Everyone pointed to the one hour mark for the hill climb. That would be a solid time. The record was 59:45. I secretly hoped for 50:00.

At a little after 10 o'clock, we started the hill climb as an individual time trial with one minute intervals between the athletes. I started 8th, eight minutes behind the first athlete. The first hill was the steepest on the course. I caught three on that first hill, though Jake, the local guy, passed me back and kept a pace that hurt me. Slowly, I moved past him, and then caught the other two athletes at about the one-third mark. At the lead of the pack, I only needed to worry about the two athletes who started behind me, particularly Drew Wills, who was widely seen as the strongest in the field. Dave Penney hiked alongside me as he often does on our training runs, though this time he told me that he didn't expect me to answer his questions. That didn't however, stop him from pushing me along by telling me that first Jake and then Drew were closing.

As I took the last turn, Dave said, "I can't believe how fast Drew was in that section. You'd better pick it up." I tried desperately to pick it up. I shifted into a bigger gear. The speed didn't seem to come. My breath caught in my adam's apple. I thought, I can make it to the finish without breathing, but I really just wanted to stop and breathe. I didn't. I struggled for more speed, hoping to breakthrough the pain, that continued to build. The finish line refused to come. I tried to convince myself to measure my strength past the crest of the hill that I knew to be the finish. If I could just convince myself to go further maybe I could make the finish line. I was never convinced, but I did make the line, at which point I hurt too much to drink anything. If I hadn't hurt so much I would have felt self-conscious of my violent, heaving gasps for breath in the midst of the organizers and support crew at the top.

I could only wait for Drew to finish. He'd started two minutes behind me. I'd lost track of time after my finish. From Dave's updates along the climb, I expected Drew to follow right behind me. I hadn't even looked back after crossing the line. As the pain settled, I agreed to take a cool down spin. Drew finished as I looped on a trail opposite the finish. I cheered for him because I knew how tough that final section had been, but I didn't know for sure who had won until I finished my cool down lap. Surprisingly, the final climb to the finish lost all of its teeth as I approached it for the second time. There I learned that I'd beaten Drew by almost a minute thirty. I'd also broken the existing record by more than ten minutes. Jake finished third in 58:16. All three of us broke the old record.

Today's race forced me to go much faster than I've gone in training. Stretching myself beyond my level of comfort--pushing through the pain--might well help me when I get to Kili, but the real point is how the sport of off-road handcycling is beginning to grow. Many are riding far more challenging trails. We're pedaling faster. We're all making improvements to the vehicles. In short, we're expecting more and we want more, which means that more and more records will fall.