The first 4-5 miles went pretty quickly and with the adrenaline pumping, I went out a little hard. With the headwind, I was discouraged by the slow speed and pushed to hard to overcome that. I dialed it back a little bit after about 20 minutes, but kept the cadence high. I really started to feel the effort at around 7-8 miles and those 4-5 miles leading up to the turnaround were tough mentally. I really felt my race was a disaster due to the poor time at the halfway point.

After the turnaround, I was cruising about 28-29mph with little effort and that lifted my spirits a bit. It was a struggle to stay down in my aero bars, but other than the turnaround, I managed to stay down the entire ride. My effort wasn't as good on the way back and despite the increase in speed, I should have been able to do more.

About 2 miles to the finish, I switched over to see my time on my computer and saw that I was going to be cutting it close to break 1hr, so I really picked it up and gave it everything. There was a sharp curve about 300m from the finish, which I took fast and finished strong.

Hold back in the first 20 minutes and leave something to push harder on the second half. I wasn't totally fresh for this ride, so if this were an "A" race I would have gone easier this past week.

Rode a couple of miles at high cadence just to keep the legs moving.


Just fitness. I felt that I should have pushed harder, but it was a good mental effort.