Dick Evans 2024: around the island, second time

Second lap of the island for me, and Michelle wasn't on the start list this year, so this is one of the few pages here that's just one of us. 6:09:26 for 112 miles, which is a long time to be on a bike in August on this island, in a category the race calls Golden Masters, which is a polite way of saying 50 to 59 and one I've decided to take as a compliment.

We don't have an official 2023 result for this race. It wasn't posted on the timing site the 2024 and 2025 editions use, and we're not going to make one up. The 2023 page has the story from the first lap, and this page has the first official time, forty-seventh in the category with bib 85.

The race has a shape. The first 30 miles, Hawaii Kai out to Ewa Beach, is a neutral start, all hundred or so of us in one peloton at 19 or 20 miles an hour, and that part is really enjoyable. Then they turn you loose on Kunia Road, five miles of hill, and the real cyclists go up it and I don't. My goal every year is to get a little further up that hill with the group before I get dropped, and in 2024 I got further than in 2023. After that it's elevation, wind, and a lot of lonely miles on the North Shore.

The number behind the better time is the winter. I'd ridden about 1,700 miles in all of 2023 and would finish 2024 just under 5,000, most of them in the room off the bedroom, on a bike that had finally been fitted to me.

Michelle rode it the following year.