2012 State TT Etc.

So the state TT went ok. Not good result wise, but personal time wise, it was my fastest 38 kilometers. Normally the state TT is 40K, but this year they shortened the route by 2 kilometers. I'm not sure why. Maybe the parking area to start/finish proximity was bad and too many folks were getting in the way.
Anyway, the last time I did this race was two years ago. My goal then was to break an hour, which I barely did running around a 59:30 I think. This year I went a lot faster. The guy who started a minute ahead of me was my buddy Andy Chasteen, and Rob started a minute ahead of him.

Going out was mostly a gradual uphill into a light headwind. There were a few rollers, but nothing major. I kept timing different landmarks like shadows, signs, and trees, and I was definitely catching Andy. When we hit the turnaround, I would estimate it was down to somewhere around 30 seconds. In hindsight, I think I went a tad too hard on the way out, because I was hurting pretty bad. Mentally I thought since I had made up time, I could just put it in cruise control mode and just keep the same distance and everything would be fine result wise. It didn't work out that way as I lost all the time I had gained, and lost some also.

In the end, Jake Lasley pretty much smoked everybody. Not sure of his time, but I heard it was around  49:00. Will Gault got 2nd, and Rob got 3rd, running a 52:58. Andy got 4th with a 53:00. and I got 5th with a 53:28ish I think. If you add the 2:45 or so that it would take to do the extra 2K, that's still over 3 minutes faster than my last time. Oh well. It's like that line Ronnie Anderson used to say "I keep getting faster, but the competition just keeps getting better".

I decided to do a quick run through Medicine Park and hit the Big Rock climb, and do a Mt. Scott run while I was down there. I'm still not sure if the extra effort helped any or just made my legs sorer today. I did pick up a mild cold last week after the CX practice, and it seems to have gotten worse. I guess I'm gonna lay low and try to take it easy for the next few days. The big State road race is this coming weekend, so we'll see how that goes.

The different route to and from work thing seems to be going ok so far. It's getting tough remembering if I've ridden down a particular street or not yet. I've definitely found a couple new sections that are pretty cool.

I really want to hit the CX practice this Wednesday, but I'm not sure how that's gonna work out as of right now. Even though I went pretty easy last time, I'm still feeling it a little bit today.