Personal Narrative Essay On The Road

July 4th 2012 it's 4 AM I am awake getting ready for the car journey to killarney I look outside's pitch black inky dark and bitter cold I'm up my bike is ready my tyres were checked I put on my cycling gear struggle to find safety pins to clip on my number my passport for the race the journey to Killarney is strange we leave at 4:30 AM my dad is driving me the roads are extremely busy for the time of morning I arrive in Killarney 5:30 in the morning the town is buzzing there are people everywhere I make my way to the sign on area there are people of all nationalities there as I begin to sign on a large group of Spanish cyclists arrive I finish signing on at roughly the same time as them and I begin talking to them as we leave Killarney cycling

again for the second year I'm up at 4 AM preparing for the ring of Kerry this year when I get to killarney it is busier it's a lot brighter as I go to the car I see the sunlight from the dawn glistening over the lake again my dad drives me to Killarney and a sign on this year I have done half as much training and there is no big group too go with from the start I'm leaving at the same time 6 o'clock as too old enough looking men wearing old Cork's cycling jerseys from a club I vaguely remember as being one of the best 30 or 40 years ago so I said hello to one of them very friendly chaps altogether and I expect that I would be dropping them within 10 or 20 minutes I should have learned my lesson from the last year not to judge a book by its cover because was I wrong or what I was the one struggling to stick with them these guys were old pros and I mean that literally one of them had made a living cycling in France and the other in Spain there were old friends and they were racing each other and I had inadvertently stumbled into this race this old rivalry but I stuck with them for the second time I was passing through Waterville at 8 o'clock in the morning and thought to myself this won't last these lads will tire soon but they didn't in fact up moules gap after Kenmare we began to pick up speed the toughest hill of the entire ring close to the end they sprinted up I was speechless from the year previous the Spanish lads didn't even go up this fast but down the other side

my third year doing this race this year I haven't trained much at all but am doing it with my cousin he's been training for months we start out and not even out of killarney five minutes and I get clipped by a woman it's her first time doing the ring she panicked when she saw one of the natural service bikes zip past them fast motorbikes and she swerved in clipped me we both went flying I slid along the road and scratched up my leg quite badly didn't hurt that much but he was bleeding quite a bit my cousin was panicking luckily the neutral service bike had a wrench so I could straighten my handlebars didn't take long before we were back on the road the blood had dried on my leg and it looked quite bad but it really wasn't we didn't make great time although I wasn't expecting to as my cousin hadn't cycled in a race before it wasn't me slowing us down though it was him but that was okay at this year I had decided I wasn't going for any particular time that I have to be in in under I was going to enjoy the cycle which I did after that injury I considered myself a veteran of the ring having done it three times and only being 16 years old I was quite proud we sat into massive group of people this year there was nearly 10,000 people taking part we were in a group that easily stretched for 3 miles at a slow sauntering pace of 25 to 30 up to 40 at some points and I began to see more and more people of different levels of fitness of different ages and everyone there raising money for