Tuesday Time Trial.

Now is good time to turn off your TV, turn off the radio, stop that music that is playing on your i-pod, tell the kids to be quite, and just listen. if you listen close enough you may just be able to hear MY QUADS SCREAMING!!! This season I have not done allot of speed workout on the bike, and I thought that the baddlands annual Tuesday night twilight time trial would be the perfect place for a speed workout. If I had to describe it in one word it would probably be ouch! From the get go I was a bit nervous, because I don't know where I fall as a rider. I know I can run well, but as far as the other two sports go I am not sure where I land. For this reason I thought this time trail would be a good test to gauge my cycling ability. I signed up for the race and put myself on the A start list. Not sure why I did, but at the moment I thought it would be fun. As more and more people started showing up the more my nerves were growing, and I wondered why I put myself on the A list.

I went for a very short warm up, and got ready to wait for my start time. With my super fast mountain bike helmet, and no idea what I was doing I was ready to go in the A class. 5...4...3...2...1 And I was off. From the get go I went out very hard. I knew this course was very short, so I figured I had to be all out from the get go. By the time I got to the turn around on lap one, my lungs felt like they were going to blow up and my legs were screaming!! I thought crap I still have 2 and a half laps to go, and I am already dying. I just told my self to hang tough, and keep trucking. Now I was onto the second lap, and all I can say is that out section on the course was killing me, there is only a couple short climbs, but I felt like I was breaking down and fading fast!! I just told myself one more lap, you are doing ok. My biggest fear was getting caught and with almost two laps completed I still had not been caught. The fact that I had not been caught yet, started to give me a confidence boost. When I started lap 3 I started to feel better, my legs hurt, but my lungs had calmed down, and as I got to the turn around I noticed I was catching the rider that started before me. Sweet!! This is going ok. From that point on I gave it everything I had to catch him, but I just didn't have enough to real him in. I finished strong and was happy with my race.

I ended up in the middle of the A pack which is just fine with me. I also learned a ton from this experience, I don't race with allot of equipment, I don't have a power meter, a heart rate monitor, a cycling computer, or even a watch for that matter. I just go as hard as a can for as long as I can. But I learned that I need to start racing smarter. Pacing myself is a good thing, and equipment such as those will help me race smarter. I also learned that I need to warm up much more before a race like this. A short out and back with not do.

I must also give a big thanks to all the tri-fusion people that were there. They just kept telling me to have fun and not worry about anything. I have been around allot of teams and clubs, in my running career, but none of them are as nice or as supportive as tri-fusion. Everyone out there did an amazing job.

Hopefully soon I can get healthy and ready to race tri's again. I would like to hit up one more late season race this year, but we will see :)