I want to thank whoever dialed up the perfect weather for the State Championship ITT's today. The weather was absolutely perfect this morning with temps in the upper 60's to low 70's and wind in the 3 mph range...Simply awesome!!!
It seems I found my legs that I left at home last weekend...well, most of them at least. Overall, my legs felt pretty good, but I think I could have/should have gone a bit faster today...but then I seem to always feel that way after a time trial.
Being the weather watcher I am, I was expecting a tailwind on the way out this morning, but was greeted with a headwind instead...though it was only around 3 mph or so, so nothing bad for sure.
The plan was to go out a little easy this year remembering my cramping from last year and my death at Cascade last week. Even going out easy my HR was around 161 bpm for the first 10-15 minutes...though my plan was to keep it around 152-155 bpm...but my legs didn't feel bad and my breathing wasn't to labored soooo, such is life.
After 5 - 10 minutes I picked the pace up and was able to keep my HR in the 160 bpm range for pretty much the entire race, which is where it should be.
During the race, I caught my 30 second guy somewhere around mile 7 or 8 and I'm guessing my 1 minute man shortly there after...then started to run into what I'm guessing were racers in the 40-44 category. At the start I only saw my 30 second guy so I didn't know what any of the other riders in front of me looked like, which in a way helped keep me pushing along the way.
The way back was a lot faster than the way out thanks to the tailwind with speeds in the 29 mph - 30 mph range most of the way back. That was a nice change of pace compared to the 24-26 mph I was going on the way out.
I ended up crossing the line with a time of 55:40 (26.73 mph average) which is 1 minute 19 seconds faster than last year....though I still cramped up a little after I crossed the line. Nothing like last year, but my left hamstring is a bit sore.
My time was good enough for 2nd place...lost by 32 seconds...but I'll take a PR of 1:19, especially after such a crappy performance last week.
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