Frostbite Time Trial

This year I was able to get a spare bike from my dad who had his old Raleigh Grand Prix in the garage. I got the bike fitted to me by Ed@Cycle U to make sure it fit. Its a bit smaller of a frame than what I currently race on. Now I just need the speed to go with it. I have been taking it to my InCycle classes at the West Seattle Cycle U leading up to the race to get used to being in full aero while trying to put the power out. Ed Ewing has been great with helping me in class get the perfect fit. We are close but he thinks I could be a bit more forward, a work in progress.

The race was the Frostbite TT and is the first race of the year. Its located up in Everett on a flat course 9 miles total with a turn around point halfway. The weather couldn't have been better with clear sunny skies. This also helped sell out the race for a record of 300 racers. Everyone was a bit worried how it would go down but the organizers did a great job. Good work Footworks & IJM.org. Travis Dougan was able to start the season with the first start time.


Everyone looked really sharp in the new kits designed by Charlie Bartlett. Everyone on the team had very good times especially for the first race of the season. Rhae our Cat 1 Pro for the ladies destroyed her field with a time 1 minute faster than anyone else. She is pretty much pro.
My time was in the top 20 which I was kinda disappointed in, 19th just doesn't sound fun. I was hoping to be in the top ten but I guess I am close, I was 1 minute off of the time of 4th place. I lined up for my 9:21.30 start time with about 45 minutes of warming up. The holder has your seat while you clip into the pedals and the official counts down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and your off. I have spent alot of time this winter reading as much as I can in regards to your position on the bike and how to do a time trial start to finish. I quickly got up to my pace as fast as I could and settled into the "aero" position on the bike. There was a slight head/side wind on the way to the turn-around point. I read some information that said you should go as hard as you can into the wind and not take it easy. Everyone will be trying to make up time on the way back. This is where you should be able to make up time on your competitors who might be going easier into the head wind. I had to mess with my bike computer a bit to get my speed up on the screen so that was a mistake I should have had done prior to my start. Then in the first 2 minutes my heartrate monitor stopped working. This was distracting and I realized after my TT that the next TT I will either have tape over it or not wear it at all. When I raced motorcycles we put tape over our speedometers because you really don't want to know that your doing 110 mph dragging your knee through a corner with the bike trying to kick you off. Same basic logic for a time trial, you are going full gas for maybe 25 minutes and managing your calories or heartrate is nothing but a distraction. After that I settled in and tried maintaining my speed at about 23 mph and slowly started catching the person in front of me. I was able to pass the person right before the turn around point. I dove to the inside of the turn to make sure he knew I was there. Then came out of the turn and powered back up to speed. I could see another person a bit up the road. I settled in to a good rythm and planned on catching them before the finish. Leading up to the 1k to go sign I was close now to the guy in front of me. I moved over to go around him and shifted into my biggest gear and went for it. I was cruising at 28-30 mph. I had nothing left when I went across the finish line besides the snot and spit that had stuck to my face. I quickly wiped that off and soft pedaled for a bit to recover.
So I finished 19th out of 64 with a time of 21:49