Wow what a difference a TT is. I was pretty nervous about this race as it is the first time I have strictly raced my bike without swimming before and running after. My heart was racing at the start. You have about 30 seconds after the person in front of you goes off to get up to the line have the start person hold your bike and get clipped in and ready to go. I took off as fast as I could and realized about 400m in that my heart rate was through the roof. This race was the antithesis to the half iron though as I needed to keep that intensity as long as possible, hopefully through the rest of the race. The start was slightly downhill so I was really maintaining what felt like a good pace. Caught up with Scott about 5 min in and he was looking strong. Soon after that I realized that I was the last cat5 rider to start as the cat 1&2 riders started FLYING past me. I mean I have been passed by plenty of triathletes but I have never seen cyclists ride this fast. I was going around 23-24 on the way out and they were passing me like I wasn't moving. I hit the turnaround in 15:30 which I was really happy about but once I made the turnaround I knew that the way back was going to be tough. There was a slight headwind that built stronger as I got back towards the finish. With about 8K to go I was hurting pretty bad, once I got to the 5K I had recovered a bit and was able to push up to the finish. The last 200m was crazy as you just get out of the seat and push as hard as possible. I was really giving it everything I had at that point.

Just more practice and perhaps better pacing as I might have gone out too hard.

Rode past the line and tried to recover some of my breath rode another half mile or so down the road then turned back to find Jen.


It was tough to do this race less than a week out from the Mountain Man HIM and my muscles were certainly feeling it.


This was a super fun, super tough race. I would never have thought that riding for 34 minutes would tear me up like it did today but time trialing is a completely different beast. I was happy with my time tough as I was less than 1:30 out of 3rd place so I definitely held my own against a group of very experienced cyclists. I think the rougher road definitely affected everyones time a little bit as the roads certainly didn't have the smoothness of some of the other roads in town. But they really had to organize it out there as there was no traffic at all. I will definitely be looking to try some more strictly bike races it was a good time.