What a beautiful day for a race with temps in the low 70's, light wind, clear skies....The Sun!
The course was almost too beautiful to race on today...In a Time Trial you just don't get to see enough of it with your head tucked and pushing with everything you have to enjoy it, unlike a regular ride or even some road races.
Yesterday we had such a hard ride (for the power nerds my TSS was just a bit over 277 yesterday over 71.5 miles) I really didn't go into this race with high expectations of a fast time or placing well. I just wanted to go as hard as possible and pull in a time around 48:00 which was my fastest time last year. I'm much stronger this year but due to having dead legs...I didn't set the bar to high today.
Warming up my legs felt OK, not too bad, but not great either. My opinion of how my legs felt change rather quickly after accelerating out of the starting gate...I could feel it :(
Down the first hill an onto the first flat my HR is usually around 160-163...today...146-148 with an average heart rate of 147 for the 20 mile race. Normally I'd average around 160 BPM for a race like this...so not only were my legs feeling it, but so was my cardio system.
On the way out we had a tail wind...which is a bit of a change from normal since the Estacada TT's usually have swirling winds since the road follows a canyon...however today the wind was pretty consistent. With a tailwind out however...that meant a headwind back. I was keeping an eye on my time and distance and passed the 5 mile mark just over 11 minutes, so I was actually ahead of my pre-guessed time...probably due to the tail wind.
At the turn around point the traffic control people were not doing a great job. When I got there they had two cars stopped in my direction and two the other direction so I had to weave my way around them and ended up shooting past the turn around point by 15 yards then had to accelerate hard to get back up to speed...probably lost a good 5-10 seconds there.
Now with the head wind my legs were really feeling it...all the hard efforts put in yesterday were felt with a deep burning sensation in my legs and butt. However, with all TT's it's just a matter of pushing through the pain and churning over the pedals.
I had two pre-set markers in my mind remembered for the way back...a side parking lot that was just over 2 miles from the finish and the 1K marker. The 1K marker is both a blessing and a curse at Estacada...It means you only have 1K to go, but you have to go up a nice little hill before getting there with your legs and usually lungs burning. You want to push harder to get every second but your body just says...Ummmmm...NO!
Finally the 200m sign and things flatten out just a bit and actually start going downhill just a bit so you can really push hard that last 200 meters. The finishing stand was a very nice site today :D
In the end, with the dead legs, a low HR and all around pain left over from yesterday I turned in a time of 47:09 which was a full minute faster than my best time last year (under similar conditions). I finished 2nd place in the Men's CAT 3 class 21 seconds off the winning pace...much better than expected, especially with legs that felt like they were filled with lead.
I'm looking forward to Estacada #3 in two weeks...hopefully on some fresh legs in good conditions...If I get those two things I think I can break 46:00 for the 20 mile course, which is a very nice time at Estacada.
My team had a good day overall...I know one my teammates won the Men's CAT 4 class and another took 2nd in his age catagory. Not sure how everybody else did though...but a good day for Portland Velo today :D
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