Sunday, May 15, 2011

Second place is...

The first loser.  But I suppose that's what I get for riding my bike twice a week and thinking I can ride fast!  The course in Upper Freehold was actually pretty interesting, much more up and down, some pretty good little turns where I am sure I lost time, and the weather turned out better than I thought it would, not a drop of rain the whole time.  I actually warmed up on the road which I prefer so immensely to riding on the trainer so that was a big plus.

I was hoping to start at the end of the 4-5 guys but it appears that the ranked starting order only counts for NJ guys maybe so I was starting in the middle and caught a few guys right away, maybe a minute or two in.  Then I took the first major right turn and it got lonely pretty quickly.


I'd actually heard several stories of going off course so I was nervous about it and after riding for what felt like quite a while and not seeing a single rider or marshal, I was getting nervous but it turns out I was on course.  The time I sat up to look behind me just to see if someone was coming probably cost me a second or two (and losing by nine I suppose I regret it, but...)  The other part that was extra fun was having to squeeze by two cars on the right who had slowed down behind a guy in front of me (who had a sweet HUGE beard, extra props for having that amongst the "aero" crowd) and hoping they didn't decide to creep over to the right and push me into the bushes.  This of course distracted me from shifting and I ended up going up the hill in the 55x18 or so, not really what I'd recommend.


In the end, I lost by nine seconds to a guy that I beat by forty seconds in the TT at LBI despite taking a wrong turn and all that.  So I figure it has to be partly due to the fact that I had ridden nearly every day prior to that race since I was on Spring Break and had time, and this week I barely rode at all because we have eighteen track meets in the span of two weeks.



But I think the next race will probably be the Philadelphia Amateur TT, hopefully a chance to pick up some PA BAR points since it is now looking like I won't really factor into that competition since I haven't been in a BAR race yet!

Monday, May 09, 2011

C-130 Hercules Time Trial

So starting out of the back of a C-130 was cool, but it would have been cooler to have a ramp that didn't make you wonder if you would either bust your wheels or just go face first into the tarmac coming down.

Actually, it wasn't quite that bad.  Maybe because I also kept wandering around thinking that I was #378 when I was actually #371 so I almost missed my start time like an idiot.

You can't really see it too well in there, but that is me rolling out of the back of the plane.  The start was interesting, semi-technical and VERY fast with a huge tailwind so it was easy to get well past 30mph and then find yourself going into a corner and, if you are terrible at driving your bike like me, it can give you a scare.

I also knew the guy in front of me was actually quite good so I was trying to chase him down and I know he made some serious distance on me coming out of the gate so I set about trying to run him down on the outbound leg.  I was happy that my HR came right up and so I felt like I was able to push pretty hard despite only going between 24-26 on the way out with the wind coming from the front and the side.  I think I got to within about 10 seconds (with some very rough calculations on my part) and passed a few other guys when we got to the turnaround...

And from there he was gone.  He was a bigger guy than me, so maybe he just had more power, but he really opened it up and even with the ten to fifteen seconds I lost when I had to slow up for a truck turning with a big trailer right in front of me, he would have killed me.  It was fun to roll past a bunch of guys but I was bummed because I knew he was in my category and I was losing the race even as I was spinning a 55x12 for a while and wishing I had an 11 on there.

I ended up finishing 3rd in the 4's, clearly a lot of work to do.  I am sure it would help if I rode my bike more than 2-3 times a week.  Hopefully I can at least go back this week and race the NJ crowd and do better than my previous run and just make all the right turns and see how I stack up.  Plus this one has at least one hill in it which I always think plays to my advantage, even when it doesn't.
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