Hines Park TT - 2009

It looked for a while like this race wasn't going to happen. When I went to bed on Saturday night, the report was that there was 1-2 feet of water over the road. I woke up a couple times during the night and could hear it raining hard. So, I was a little surprised to check my email Sunday morning and find that the race was still on (although probably delayed a little).

So, I loaded up the car and drove down (through more rain) to the race, where I found out the race was delayed 30 minutes, then an hour. By the time I started, it was getting hot, humid, and windy... perfect weather for bike racing!

The race went OK for me. I felt like I settled into a good pace pretty quickly. There were still some big puddles on the road; some of them where I wanted to ride. I hadn't considered that there would be a difference in puddles in the road created by rain (which is what I usually see) and those created by a flooding river. Turns out that the flooding river kind are really muddy. So, just a few minutes into the race, my bike and I were covered in mud... I usually finish mountain bike races cleaner than I finished yesterday. I tried to avoid the puddles a little more after I got coated the first time.

When I've done this race in the past and it's been windy, it seems like I usually get a good tailwind on the way out. There may have been some of that yesterday, but at times, I got a pretty strong crosswind instead, so the going wasn't too easy. There were strong headwinds and crosswinds all the way back too. Add the heat and humidity, and conditions were pretty tough.

I passed a few people on the course, including my dad, and only one guy passed me. I ended up finishing nearly a minute slower than last year. I'd like to attribute it all to the conditions, but I'm not sure if that's really the case.