This was a crazy race. First 3km we had tail-sidewind and the wind was really strong and I was a little worried before the start about holding the bike straight and thought it might be best not to be aero too much in the beginning.
Did one big mistake (once again!) at the start as I was in my smalles gear as I had just biked down and up the hill again right before. So as soon as I started I had to get on the big chainring and click through all the gears to get to the hardest one! That definitely cost me a few seconds and therefor 3rd place (3rd place was one second ahead of me!) but I will remember that next time for sure! Started strong downhill and the wind hit right away. Stayed up on the handlebars to start with and then went aero a bit testing out how stable the bike is. Switched a lot between aero and the handlebars during the first 3km and of course always had to go aero to switch gears (back and forth between the heaviest and second heaviest). Maybe I should have just mashed it out the entire time. After 3km there is a slight turn and wind turned into tailwind and from then on it was just pure fun! I span at about 120rpm and I was definitely out of gear! I could have gone faster if I would have had 1-2 bigger gears! At one point when I was going above 60km/h I thought about what would happen if I crash with the bike now but tha thought was banned as far in the back as possible. Concentration pure the entire time!
Not sure if I would have been able to bike faster! Definitely not the last part but maybe in the beginning but I did not want to risk falling of my bike or getting blown into the lava so I guess this was as good as it could have been under the circumstances. But it sure did not feel hard at all and I was actually surprised to see an avg HR of 163 as it felt so much easier!