It was the Tri club who held the race, and I don’t know if it was the president’s way of playing a joke on me or what, but I was to start 5 last, or 16th (21 starters not lot I know, but that is it, there aren’t anymore), right in the middle of all the bikers….the really bikers, you know the ones with disc wheels are aero helmets. Good one, maybe I should stop reminding him that he has not completed a single tri this year :) We started with 1 minute intervals, and the only time I saw the one that started in front of me was at the turn around :(
I started hard, and it took me a couple of minutes to get everything under control. There was a tailwind on the first part which made it quit fast, even though there hardly was a single piece of straight road. It was either a little up or down the whole time. I was hoping if everything went well to average 35 km/h I knew it would be slower going back so I every time I was over 35 km/h I was happy.
I was going at what I thought would be the max pace I would be able to hold for the whole race. Was it comfortable ? No, not really. I was focusing on going the fastest I could without dieing (that is the whole point of the race, right?) My cadence was about 100, when it came close to 90 it felt heavy so I tryed to keep it up. I have gone a way from using force, now I prefer to spin it, that is just the way my legs survive the longest.
17 minutes gone and the first guy pass me, not fast he is just going a little bit faster then me :( It was a little early (I did not expect to be passed so soon) so it gave me a little wake up call. I tried to push just a little harder and see if I could keep him in sight. Well that worked for about 30 seconds, but he had giving me a push, I could go a little faster without it killing me. I was now on the last part before the turn around, and it was a little downhill :) I was doing around 50 km/h the last 4-5 minutes before the turn. And it felt GOOD, just knowing that I can reach those speeds made me happy.
The biggest threat in my age group (that I knew of) had started 4 minutes before me, so the only chance I had to get any idea of how I was doing was at the turn around. When I passed him he looked tired :) and he was working hard. The turn around came up very quickly, it was just a single cone on the road, hard on the breaks, down shift, turn. Is was about 40 second since I passed the guy, so I must have gained something around 2:30 on him :) :) :) This was looking good. This was the only time I changed the display on my bike computer (I always have it on ride time) but I wanted to see my average speed……….and….….40.1 km/h it said :o “Holy steam roller Batman, that’s pretty fast” Well that was also the easy part that was done, this next long stretch (that had gone by pretty fast the other way) turned out to be hard, just a little uphill but for a long time and now I could really feel the rain and wind :( Oh it was going to be a long ride back. What did I do ? What I had ! There was only one thing to do, don’t complain about things you can not change, so I just focused on doing my best, I almost forgot about the rain as I started to pick up some of the earlier starters. It did not take me long to get the guy I thought was my biggest threat. I simply just drove by him and there was nothing he could do. The rest of the race was uneventfully, I was riding as fast as my legs, lungs and heart allowed me. Over the last km I push the last bits of strange out of my legs and had a very good finish.
Average speed 37.0 km/h :) :) Could I be´ any happier? At the medal presentation I discovered that my “biggest threat” had placed 3rd ???? But who else was there, I thought I had it won, but at that point I got really scared that I had finished second. The name called was……not mine..:) I had no idea who the guy was but I had just managed to bet him by 30 seconds. Well that it is all it takes.

In think for ones I actually passed it very good, I don’t believe that I could have done any better.

Rolled 1 km very easy then I could simply not sit anymore


My old bike with the shifter on the down tube ! and the rain. Even though I think I was doing a lot better in the rain then some of the others!