I had set a goal at the beginning of the year to ride this race at 280 watts. I did this race 2 years ago at 270 watts and it was probably one of my best performances as far as racing to my potential. Last year's opening TT at Makaha was a huge dissapointment at 263 watts despite being 2.5 miles shorter.

Training was going well, but nothing really told me that I could hold 280 for about 30 minutes on my TT bike. Most of my 5' intervals in training were in the 280-300 range, and they felt pretty hard. I also had a sub par GAR last week and thoughts about my fitness being down after getting sick at the end of January were in the back of my mind, but I decided that I wasn't going to make any excuses...because I really did feel like shit after last year's TT when I gave up mentally. I take pride in my TT'ing, and I didn't want to have that post race feeling again where I know I let people beat me that have no business doing so.

So I get out of the gates pretty well, and naturally my wattage is way too high. After the initial jump, I'm still holding about 310 watts for the first minute, so I knew I needed to settle down. I spent the next 5' averaging about 275 to let my total AP drop back down to about 285. The roads are pretty horrible the first 2 miles...probably better suited for a CX bike. But after that the road is pretty cherry, and that's when I started to reel in some riders. It gave me some motivation to keep my power at 285 all the way to the turn around and I saw Burt who started 90 seconds ahead of me...and I knew I was cutting into that gap.

My U-turn sucks balls. It was HORRIBLE. Greg was there and he just laughed his ass off as I simply yelled out..."I SUCK".

Now we're riding straight back into the wind and honestly it helped me focus a little more. I had to shift around quite a bit to find the right gear depending on how much wind we were getting, and the roads were starting to get rough again with took some of the focus away from the pain in my legs. My power was starting to drop down to about 282, but I still felt pretty strong.

Just past mile 9, with no warning, I threw up a little. It wasn't a full on gag...just somehow about an ounce of that energy drink just spilled out of my mouth. I took it as a good sign that I was working hard, and gave me a little boost. It was about this time I started drooling uncontrolably all over myself...another good sign. ;)

With about 2 miles to go, I shifted into a harder gear and just told myself to suffer. I figured it was only going to be about 5 more minutes, so I just treated it like a 5' all out interval which I have lots of experience doing. The last minute, I tried to empty the tank...and honestly...I probably had a tad too much left as I averaged about 370 for that last minute.

Crossed the finish pretty spent, and almost immediately pulled over so I could sit down.

I paced it pretty darn well. 6 watts above my goal, and I probably could have pushed another 1-2 watts. It probably would have moved me up a couple places to 6th overall, but no big deal. I felt surprisingly good in my more aggressive position. Neck pain was not even an issue, but I wasn't actively turtling as much as I should have. It sort of just slipped my mind.

My training volume the past 2 weeks was really low...but maybe that's just what I needed? I rode at 16 more watts this year compared to 2 years ago, and rode 1.3 mph faster. The difference this year is my position is about 2 inches lower, Vitorria EVO tires compared to GP4000S tires before, bottle between the aerobars instead of the downtube (I didn't drink either time), and shoe covers this year.

2 years ago I was about 3 minutes off the winning time, and this year I was only 1:32 off. I was also only off of Tony by about 30 seconds, but I don't think he had a good race.

I'm probably going to have to race Cat 1/2/3 next year as I got a lot of "sandbagger" comments (in jest) for racing 4/5.


They need to repave the first 2 miles of the road before we host another TT here.