Ft Custer TT - 2011

Or, how not to let a bad result ruin a good race...

I raced the Fort Custer TT this weekend for the first time. The weather was perfect for bike racing: sunny, maybe 65 degrees, minimal wind.

The guy that started with me took off like a shot and I never saw him again (he ended up 2nd in my class). I got surprised at the start of the race a little. We rode along a road for a while, which was fine, but when we dove into the singletrack, it was a piece of trail that I hadn't seen before. There wasn't anything difficult about it, but I was going fast enough that it would have been nice to know where I was going

Brad, Shawn and one other guy that started just behind me passed me early, but for most of the race, I felt really good, easily the best I've felt at a race this year. I was able to push hard on the pedals, I was riding well, no one else was passing me. I started thinking I might be doing pretty well in the race. At the end of the Amusement Park, I could see a couple guys creeping up on me, but I was able to maintain my gap over them for a long time.

It wasn't until about halfway through the Green loop (maybe about 10-15 minutes to go in the race?) that I started fading. My legs started getting tired and maybe I lost focus a little. A few guys got by me, and then a bunch right before we finished the singletrack. Still, I finished pretty strong, and it didn't seem like that many people had passed me, so I thought I'd done OK.

Then I checked the results. Last! Dammit! It sucks when you have a good race and get nothing to show for it. Goes to show how good the Expert field is though.

Crunching through the times later, I saw that I did improve relative to my peers from the time trials earlier this year. At least there's some hard evidence of improvement. Andrea also got a pretty good picture of me from early in the race. At least I look like a bike racer...

I'm not going to stay too down about the race. I felt really good and showed some measureable improvement. It was interesting that I'd say my weakness this time was just not being able to put down the power.