2013 Burlingame MTB TT

This TT is great.  It has really become a RI "spring classic" for me (and I bet a lot of others).  The time to test your fitness not just against others, but see if you can keep your HR in the 190ies for 45 mins w/out throwing up after a winter of...well what ever it was that you did over that period.   The course is fun and challenging enough to pack a punch if you don't plan your efforts carefully, especially in the beginning three miles.  

I always get a little over exited when the race season is starting, which the B-game TT is the start of.  I love my wife and kids dearly and wouldn't want a thing different.  My work is good too and have nothing to complain about. But riding is really the icing on my great cake of life, and racing is that damn cherry on top (i actually hate cherries).  Racing is riding on steroids!

Rich killing it at the TT 

The race was great.  Very well planned by the usual crew of great guys, w/ a new timing chip attached right to the number plate.  If someone beat you this year by 1/2 second, you know it was going to be real, not a human judgement. Very fancy stuff!  Everything was flawlessly implemented.  I had the three guys I wanted starting in front of me, w/ Rich (who I  knew I would never catch- he's gotten way too fast), SteveO starting one minute before me, then Freddie at 30 seconds.  Both very tasty locally grown organic carrots!

SteveO coming through!

Freddie called me the P-word at the start for debating about getting my feet wet right away at the first mud puddle (he was right-I am).  But I had him caught and passed during the first climb of the new section, and was able to return the name for having lost so much ground so quickly. I was able to tackle the new section fairly intelligently, by keeping my pace high but without blowing up on the steep little short climbs.  I decided to just run up the two hard ones to make sure I wouldn't loose time trying to ride it unsuccessfully at race pace.

Freddie working it!

Coming out of the new section and turning left onto the fire road section I put Steve in my sights, but then on the fast decent trying to catch up, drifted into a wet rocky rut and went down.  The fall wasn't bad but my front wheel twisted and it took a couple of seconds to figure out which way to turn the bars.  By the time I was back on the bike, Steve was gone.  A mile down, I started to catch back up on the fire road climb and he let me pass him before the road section.

The rest of the race went w/out a problem.  I did dab once on the log/puddle/rock climb, but after that it was mostly fire roads and the bridges. The bridges were dry so everything was easily rideable.  My finishing time was 45:18.  Last year's time was 44:27, but many racers thought this year's course was a little slower.  I think we were maybe all a little slower because it has been a colder and longer winter.  At any rate, I felt a lot better this year, and even though the time doesn't reflect it, this year's race felt a lot more fluid.  I finished 8th out of 26, and I hate to be so shallow, but really it's all about beating Freddie and Steve...that be my icing on the cherry!

Who knows what the hell I was thinking there...