Break-Away Bicycle Club TT#3

I started the race with built-in excuses why my legs might fail me: I was sporting a tender, softball sized bruise on the inside of my thigh (gee, any guess what caused it?) that I gave myself Friday; and my quads felt strained from catching a double-header on Wed., doing a hilly ride on Thurs., and then catching on Friday again. Oh, wait, you're expecting to read a race report, aren't you?

I was warming up on my trainer, wondering why it was only 59 degrees at the end of July; and wondering where the rain was coming from since it hadn't been forecasted last we knew. The tailwind outbound was nice. The headwind on the return hurt. My heart-rate monitor had slipped a bit low just past the turnaround, and it wasn't getting a constant signal. I refused to break my aero position (such as it is) to adjust it. When it gave me a signal, I was usually a few beats below the rate I wanted, but the legs were telling me the lactic was building, and if I expected to complete it, not to push it harder.

Jim, Wendy, and I had driven the course the night before, so I had two landmarks to start ramping up my speed. I hit the first, gave it a little more juice. Hit the one about a mile out, asked for more, but it just wasn't there. I tried to make myself sprint to the finish, but that wasn't there, either. After 40 KM, I was only 36 seconds over the time I was shooting for. Given the conditions, and that Jim was telling me everyone was slower this year due to the wind, I'm very happy with how the race went. The field of 6 was larger than last year; it made me happy I'd traveled so far for the race rather than staying in my backyard, Dublin.

This race saw me sporting new tires and race-lite tubes, which probably contributed to my performance. In doing the changeout Friday, I managed to blow the tire right off the rim. I was sure I hadn't pinched the tube when I started blowing it up... As I hit 155 PSI, though, I had a second of hesitation, thinking something was wrong, before hearing the big "ka-boom" and the ringing in my ears. I had pinched it right at the valve stem. Duh.

Wendy and Jim, thanks for telling me about the race, keeping me company, and being such wonderful teammates.

This race dedicated to the godfather of soul James Brown with "I feel good" as it was playing repeatedly in my head. The ironic part is I didn't feel good after the turn around at all, in fact it was more like "Will this never end!"

As I loaded the car this morning the pavement was wet, but as we arrived at the course I was encouraged because it had dried off, that is until half-way through warmups. Then the rain came and decided not leave. With the temp; only being 61; combined with the rain made for such a lovely day.

For some reason my start was fairly slow me, not sure why, there really wasn't a good reason for it. After the first 2 miles I was settled in and noticied my pace steadily increasing. That's when I was joined on the road (mentally anyway) by Mr Brown's music. As I went through the turn around I was on pace for a terrific ride. There's a little decent on the way back after the turn around but noticed my speed was short of normal. As I crested the top of the climb the reason for the speed shortage hit me like a ton of bricks, the wind. A viscious headwind of a wind. It was extremely difficult to find any speed whatsoever on the way back and my pace fell off to a very disappointing time.

After the race as I scanned results, it seemed that everyone was off by 2-3 minutes fo their norms.

What is it with racing in the rain...This race is usually 90+degrees and sunny. Today was 60 degrees and raining. Yuck, 25 miles by yourself in the rain, oh and if that wasn't enough fun, the wind on the way back in just tormented you. Nice, fast ride out,long,slow ride in. Still managed to do well here. I still took a couple of minutes off of last year's time, but didn't do as well as I expected.
Well, there is always next year...