Staunton’s Tour de Donut is the first race I ever entered. In this quirky race, entrants race a ~30 mile route with two donut stops; 5 minutes are deducted from your finishing time for each donut eaten, and results are tabulated for both outright time and donut-adjusted time.
Mmmmmm…donuts…
In 2009, shortly after my first Katy Trail through-ride, my son and I “raced” this for the first time and were instantly hooked. Well, I was; he made it back one more time before moving on. Not only was this my first race, but it was also my first podium in 2010 (2nd place AG donut-adjusted) and the first outright podium finish that wasn’t a function of low numbers of entrants (2nd place AG last year).
Based on last year’s strong finish — by chip time I was the 9th woman overall — I returned this year with big ambitions of repeating my podium. I even recruited a small crew of domestiques. Granted, I didn’t really do any bike training after Dirty Kanza, but I’d logged about 120 miles on my mountain bike in the past few weeks and should be able to manage a 34-mile road effort in someone else’s draft.
Unfortunately my road bike, perhaps bitter over being ignored in favor of my other bikes, had other plans entirely.
