Time trialin' to a personal best... barely.

Tonight was the last evening informal time trial of the season, and, under perfect weather with just a light breeze, Shea and I were the only riders to show. Ah well... it's like everyone is getting ready for cyclocross already or something? Regardless, I needed a hard workout with hills and wanted to take advantage of the chance to gauge my fitness compared to earlier in the year. Thankfully, Mojo, who organizes these things, was willing to sit around and wait with his stopwatch.

I knew by looking at my watch that I was making pretty good time, and at some point knew that I was doing a good job on pushing the pain override button when I stopped being able to calculate my finish time if I rode the rest the way I'd ridden the first part. For example, given a 14 mile course, 3.67 = 1/4, so I was looking at my watch and multiplying by 4. Yeah, clearly too much oxygen on the right (or is it left?!) side of my brain. That didn't stick.

Shea passed me somewhere around mile 5 and I kept him in sight up the next hill before losing him again. He was riding comfortably, which was great to see.

By the end, my legs were cooked. I rode hard to the finish line and beat my previous best by a whole 8 seconds. Ah, well, that one was a good ride too.

My times over the summer:
6/23 - 53:40
7/7 - 52:46
7/21 - 52:17
8/4 - 54:16
9/15 - 52:09

Just barely missed the 52 minute mark tonight. arg. I can truly compare these times - I rode 'em all on my cross bike with cheap road wheels. The only change has been a new compact crankset with lower gearing for cross... not sure this helped me tonight, but expect that I'll be enjoying it on the grass at cross practice tomorrow.