I wasn’t last!

At least a couple of people were slower than me today in my first race – this month’s Fiesta Island Individual Time Trial.

In an individual time trial, the riders start one at a time with a specific interval between each rider. You race the clock instead of each other which is why many call the time trial “the race of truth”. There is no hiding when racing against the clock.

I arrived early enough to check out how the start house worked and to get properly warmed up on my trainer. This was my first real cycling competition and I was pretty excited. After warming up, I pedaled to the start house and got in line for my start time of 8:08:30 am. I got more and more amped as my turn approached. When it was my turn, I could barely hear the countdown – I was so focused on the road ahead. Now I understand why they do finger-countdown in the riders face for the pros.

5-4-3-2-1-Go! and I was off. My race was three laps around Fiesta Island which is 20km. I was really nervous about going too fast at the start and burning out. Sure enough, I passed a few riders going a LOT slower than me and I figured they had bonked and were just trying to finish their last lap. I tried to regulate my power output at around 90% and completed the first lap in 11:20. I kicked it up a notch on my second lap and my legs started to feel pretty good. I figure I should have warmed up for 45-60 min instead of just 30. I completed my second lap in 11:02. I felt really fast going into my last lap and I focused on putting in all the power I could. About halfway through my last lap it really started to hurt but I just pushed through and added more power. I finished my final lap in 10:41 for a combined time of 33:01 which is an overall average speed of 22.58 mph.

With a time of 33:01, I ranked 13th out of 15 for the Senior Men’s Cat 4/5 category (I categorized myself as a Cat 5 racer). I was happy to find out that at least someone was slower than me in my category. I was faster than several people in other categories as well (like most of the the Mens 70+ category, for example). You can check out the full race results if you’re interested.

I really enjoyed the effort and excitement of this race. Everything went very smoothly and the only things I would change next time would be to warm up a little more and replace my 12-27 cassette with the 11-23 in my toolbox. Fiesta Island is ridiculously flat and it would have been nice to have my gears a bit closer together.

Tagged as: Racing