There is one more week to go, but this was my last race of the series as I will be on the road to Utah next week. It was good to go out with my best time yet – 25:25, which put me 23rd out of 46. Mr. 50% again… I had ridden pretty hard up High Grade last night, sacrificing a little bit of leg freshness tonight for extra training in advance of my big race next week. I felt pretty decent, finally getting my heart rate up over 180 like it should be. I tried a new strategy – my teammate Marco said that an average speed of 24.7mph was needed to get below 25 minutes. I set my computer to display the average speed and focused on keeping it as high as I could. With a couple miles to go, it dropped to 24.6 – I cranked as hard as I could and went faster, and faster as the line closed in. By the time I crossed it, my average was up to 25mph. I was pumped! Then I looked at my time – dang! Didn’t break 25:00, but got my best yet. Need to check Marco’s math, though…

I ended up 29th out of 62 in the series.

My recipie for a great race. Get up at 5:30 on Saturday morning, pack all the gear in the car, drive 40 minutes to the course. Pay money, go through warmup routine, line up with 40 other bozo’s and ride fast. Then mix a little of this, with a little of that, and you get a big one of these.

Fun while it lasted – which was about 6 minutes to be exact. Didn’t even finish the first lap!! I was lazy and didn’t bring pit wheels, thinking that if I flatted I would just fix it and possibly line up for a later race in one of the other categories. I didn’t count on destroying my tire! Oh, well – that’s bike racing for ya.

My teammate Steve narrowly missed the win! He did snag a new pair of Rudy Project glasses by winning an intermediate sprint, though. Nice work, there.

I took out my frustration on the High Grade climb near my house and set a new personal record of 54:53.

Sunshine and 80 degrees yesterday, woke up to a steady rain, low clouds, and a prediction for thunderstorms and 20-30mph winds this afternoon. Hmmm, must be time trial day!! Oh, well – at least we’re not in Montana:

Today: Periods of rain and snow this morning, becoming snow, possibly heavy late in the day. Windy. Colder. High around 40F. Winds NE at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of precip 80%. 3 to 6 inches of wet snow expected.
Tonight: Periods of snow. Cold. Low 29F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulating 4 to 6 inches.
Tomorrow: Snow during the morning, with continued snow showers during the afternoon. Cold. High near 40F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%. 2 to 4 inches of snow expected.

Well I might as well have been racing in 6 inches of snow. I actually felt pretty good, but boy, did I go slooow. Probably a correlation there…

23rd out of 37, my worst finish yet. I barely stayed under 28 minutes with a 27:56. Everyone lost 30-45 seconds due to the weather, I seemed to lose more than double that amount. Great. Kinda gettin sick of this TT stuff.