15 March 2007

Swanton Road Time Trial

After work, I headed home on my beater mountain bike. I got home at 5:25, quickly got changed, and headed out for the Swanton Road Time Trial, which I had never tried before. Since it started at 6:15, I was afraid I wouldn't get there in time, but I also didn't want to ride too hard and trash my legs. When I was almost there, I checked the time, and it was 6:05, so I would be on time.

I started 5th, and headed out at a pretty good pace. On the way out, I overtook three riders that started ahead of me, and didn't get passed, so all the really fast guys started pretty far after me. A ways before the turnaround at the top of the climb, I saw the last guy who started ahead of me headed down. After the turnaround, I saw lots of riders headed up the climb. After the descent, there were a bunch of bugs hitting me in the face. With about three miles to go, a guy on a Litespeed flew by me. I kept him in sight until the last few hundred yards. My time was 34:08, I think. It was a time I was quite happy with.

After resting a while, I headed home, hoping to get back before dark.

[My time was 34:29 in the posted results. Going in, I wanted to ride under 40 minutes, so I'm very happy with a time under 35 minutes. My previous best time out was around 23 minutes on 30 December 2006, and my previous best time back was around 21 minutes on 10 July 2005, making for a time around 44 minutes.]