Time Trials

On March 8th Cory and I did our first indivdual time trial (ITT). It was located at Bear Creek Lake Park just south of our house. It was a nice sunny day but a little chilly with temps in the 40's. A time trail is a race where you race against the clock with racers starting every 30 seconds. If you have ever seen the guys with big long tear drop shaped helmets and disc wheel they are probably doing a TT. The course was about 10 miles long with a pretty good hill up to the top of a dam and then back down. Cory race catagory 4, the lowest cat for women, and I raced cat 5, the lowest cat for men.

My start time was 1:05:30pm. It is diffcult to go as hard as you can with nobody around to really race against, but that is part of the fun in a TT. I felt pretty good for most of the race with my heart rate at 88% to 90% of my maxium heart rate. There was a little hill right at the end of the course which I completly wasted myself on. It took me a good 3 or 4 mintues to get my breath back down to a point where I did not think I would throw up. They say that you do not feel like you are just about to throw up you are not going hard enough. The offcials grouped the cat 3, 4 and 5 guys together and I placed 38th out of 50 with a time of 0:25:04. I was pretty happy with that place considering it was my 1st TT and the cat 3 guys were included in my group.

Cory started at 12:43:00. This TT was a good practice. She is going to do a 7 week Wednesday evening TT series in April and May at Cherry Creek State Park. For her 1st TT she really looked like she knew what she was doing but did not full warmed up until Mile 7. Good lesson to learn to warm up more before the next race. Cory came 6th out of 9, but two of the women should have been racing cat 3 (their times were good enough to get 1st and 2nd in the cat 3).

Here are a couple of pics of me at the start.

Here I am about at mile 3 or 4.

Here is Cory just after the finish. I think she is still recovering.

Cory, me, Megan, Megan's dog Phoenix, and RaNae (who is an animal in the hills) getting ready before the race. Megan is the owner/founder of DFT.

On Sunday, March 9th we went down to City Park downtown Denver to watch a Crit (Criterium) and some other DFT members race. A Crit is a race where a field of 30 to 100 racers ride a .5 mile to 2 or 3 mile course for a certain amount of time, usally 45 to 60 mins. When there is about 10 mins left race offical start to countdown laps. When the lap count get to zero who ever crosses the line first wins. Racers try to stay in a tight pack, or peloton, to try and stay near the front. The course usally have a lot tight corners and crashes are typically specatular with a whole bunch of riders going down at once. TTs are like rally car racing and crits are more like formula 1 car racing. I am going to do my 1st one tomorrow, but more about that later.