14 August 2012

Sunday was the Oregon time trial championships. This was my sixth time competing on the same 40K course, and my record has been pretty good:

• 2007:  2nd in 53:26 (won in 52:42)
• 2008:  2nd in 51:50 (won in 51:34)
• 2009:  1st in 51:13
• 2010:  1st in 52:16
• 2011:  1st in 51:08

Actually, looking back at these times, it is nice to note that I started riding my own TT bike in 2008 – the bike/position definitely made me faster! The course is flat and smooth, with just the wind providing the variance – last year it was a light headwind out/tailwind back and I had a great day to set the current course record.

This year my racing season has not gone to plan – training went really well over the winter, and I picked up a couple of 2nd place finishes in road races in the spring. But since then I have been struggling with some health issues, leading to my training being very inconsistent. I had to miss the state road champs altogether, but wanted to at least show up for the time trial, even if I wasn’t too optimistic about being able to defend my title.

The wind was blowing a bit more than last year, and it was a tailwind on the outward leg – I knew I needed to get to the turn in less than 24 minutes to have a shot at a good time – 24:30 was close but not good enough, which was confirmed by my split on Colby (a very fast young rider from Bend) – I was 18 seconds down at this point. The return leg into the wind was really not fun, I was hurting and wanted to get off! But I toughed it out, and finished with a time of 52:39 – which I was pretty pleased with considering my form and the wind. That ended up being good enough for third, behind Colby Wait-Molyneux (51:56) and a storming ride by Joshua Liberles (51:19).

• 2012:  3rd in 52:39 (won in 51:19)

So I guess I’ll have to try to do better next year…. Incidentally, this was my first time out with the new Enve 85mm front wheel. It did feel a little bit more stable than the Hed Stinger 9 I was using previously.

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