Well...I must say that this race did not go as planned. As a ma
ter of fact it was down right miserable. Brian, John T. Lyle and Myself all went to the Friday Night TT at the track on July 4th. I had really planned on having a good race since I have been feeling so good as of late....how foolish of me. Now if it had been only a 5 mile TT i would have done pretty good but since it was 20 I should have just stayed home.
I showed up a little later than I wanted to and did not have much time to warm up. I did not think this would be a problem though since it was a 20 miler I figured that I would just ride into it and still be able to do well. The problem is I have not learned how to do that in a race situation yet. I started off hard from the start, big mistake, but was feeling pretty good. As a matter of fact I was feeling really good until about five miles in. Thats when my world fell apart.
I had been pacing "T" since he started 15 sec ahead of me and was slowly closing
the gap. I was feeling really good until the 5 mile mark when my heart went into affib. Fortunately the track is pretty level so I continued to ride, slowing my speed and increasing my cadence. I was still feeling OK and if my heart would have been my only probem this particular evening I would have been happy.
Now I have ridden my new bike a couple of times but no sustained time in the aero bars....big mistake. It was like Erie all over, my saddle started to feel like it had teeth and I was unable to get comfortable, that along with my heart beating funny really made me want to just quit, but I didn't. For
tunately my heart came back into rhythm fair
ly quickly but by that time I was more or less just turning the pedals. My discomfort was really ruining it for me now. I kept trying to find a good position, but was unable to until almost the end of the race. I crept out onto the nose of the saddle and was able to sit there with little discomfort and was able to concentrate on riding.
My speed also increased back to where it had been earlier but it was too late. I ended up finishing 10th out of 11 and I also think that i did an extra lap as well. It was a 40 lap race and I was using my computer to gauge my distance. I had ridden the apron of the track and got exactly .5 miles. At the 10 mile mark my computer read 10.3 so I figured that at the end of the race my com should read around 20.8. When i got to the 20 mi mark though my computer only read 20.4 or somthing close to that so I went around again. It is my hoe that next weeks TT goes better. Brian and I are going to work on my position this afternoon.
So we opted for the 3 man loop, and as usual 4 men started together and 3 finished. We had a really nice ride, although my quad were still screaming from the night before, but the further we rode the better they felt.
