Saturday, April 11, 2009

Iron Gate Winery Time Trial

Could have been titled, Sure, Why Not?

This was more of an impromptu race.  I found the flier at a local ice cream store, and decided it might be fun.

THE RUNDOWN:                                                                         10.5(6) mile time trial in Mebane, NC put on by Chapel Hill, NC cycling team TriCyclists.  This was a more professional race than anything I've done before.  There were many Cat 1&2 riders there along with a whole bunch of 3-5’s. Alas, there were are few of us “citizens” rounding out the remaining participants.

Not much of a story to tell.  I was one of probably 20 bikes there that did not either have full zipps or a rear disc wheel.  Let’s be honest, i was lusting for the better part of an hour.  I waited in line, my time came, rode hard, rode aero, and rode pretty well.  There was a really young kid in front of me on what I’m guessing was a 46 cm bike..if that’s possible…with a zipp setup.  My two goals today were to make sure i passed him, and attempt to keep from getting passed by anyone else.  I caught him at the top of the first climb, road a few lengths behind him for about a minute as i waited for my hear rate to come back down, and then engaged the slingshot, passing my young competition.  I feel like a jerk writing this, but having a target in a time trial makes life so much better.  At about mile 9, i failed my second goal, as a guy who started 4 positions behind me, meaning 4 minutes behind me, came flying passed me.

Interesting side note..i uploaded the course from mapmyride.com to my Garmin 305, and FAIL!!!  My Garmin told me i had a mile left, when actually i had 2 miles left.  When i look at my speed graph, you can tell an obvious hike in speed, followed shortly by an O $#!+, a slowing, and then a true sprint about half a mile later.  If i can figure out how to get this graph out of training center, I'll put it up.  I'm guessing i should switch to sports tracks.  We’ll see.

Anyways, at the end of the day, I averaged 20.4 MPH for something around 31:40.  It could have been anywhere from 31.10 to 32, as i didn’t stop my Garmin when i should have, and the course was not exactly 10.5.  I was told it was a little bit over 10.6.

Long story short, it was a lot of fun, I actually stayed in aero the majority of the time.  It was a lot of fun, and in other news, I WON MY AGE Group.   I’m not telling how many people were in my age group though ;-)

i leave you with more FAIL:

fail-owned-school-sign-fail

(www.failblog.org)

1 comment:

Rainmaker said...

Very nice. Doing a TT is on the list of things I'd love to do - just for the fun of it. :)