Carolina Cycling Time Trial 5.5.10 Recap

Have you ever finished a race and felt like if you could do it over again, your second effort would be so much faster.

This is what happened to me last night. When I finished my time trial, I knew perfectly well that I didn't get everything out of myself.

Before the race, I had been adjusting my seat height. Then, I road about 12 miles to warm up and didn't have any issues.

When I went off the starting line, I noticed on the first lap that my seat was slipping down. By 5 and ½ miles, the seat had slide completely down to the frame. Oh, the frustration was all over my face.

I had 2 options either continue riding or stop and adjust the seat. Stopping would have been a disaster to my time. Otherwise, I had to keep riding. I choose to keep riding

Oh, this was tough. If you can picture an adult riding a tricycle, then you have a pretty good picture of me. My knees, quads, glutz were all scream that this was the dumbest thing that I have tried to do.

While the mechanical issues slowed me down, there was a bright side. I rode 25:04 for 10 miles which is 12 seconds slower than my best time last year.

Barring my mechanical woes, my 24:52 time would have went down for sure.

Stepping back and looking at the entire evening, the time trial is pretty cool activity. Slower riders go off starting at 6:30. The riders going off later will ride progressively faster. What is really cool is going off late when the lights come on. The lights give a totally different aspect to the time trial.

After my efforts on the track, I went over to the smaller to track for some cool down miles. While spinning along, up rides this guy who calls me "Dude". I quickly recognized him from the Morganton Biathlon Sunday. We rode together for a short time and talked about the toughness of the Morganton Bike course. We also talked about how dead the effort left our legs.

After splitting off from him, I put my bike away and headed out to watch the other riders. Tom T. was out and looking pretty fast on his bike. Tom is my gauge for riding. During my first Duathlon, Tom blew by me like I was sitting still. Since that day, I have been working hard to close some of that gap.

Here's a breakdown of my splits. As you can see, my legs were really struggling after the seat went down. Except for the last mile where I pushed the frustration aside.

 

Avg. 23.8 Max 28.2

 

2:28 - 24.2 27.8

2:35 - 23.2 27.5

2:31 - 23.8 27.8

2:24 - 24.9 27.3

2:29 - 24.0 27.4 - 12:29 (5 miles)

 

2:33 23.5 28.2 (seat malfunction)

2:22 25.3 27.4 (Adrenaline)

2:36 23.1 26.4

2:42 22.1 26.5

2:20 24.1 26.8 - 25.04 (10 miles) (Adrenaline)