Southeast Regional Time Trial Championship Race Report

July 30 - Aug 5
S:  13,550 yds - 3hr 9min
B:  108.69 mi - 5hr 48min
R:  36.48 mi - 4hr 43min
Total:  13hr 39min

On Friday afternoon I headed down to Montgomery, AL to participate in the Southeast Regional Time Trial Championship that would take place the next day.  The race was set to be 40k in distance on a flat-ish course.  Jeffrey and David Shelley (local B'ham triathletes who were also racing the next day) afforded me the luxury of a home-stay at their parents' house...complete with all the cookies that I could eat!  I of course refrained from the cookies, although I must say that it was tough to do so.  We arose the next morning and went through the standard routine of drinking coffee and eating bagels with peanut butter, honey, and fresh fruit...all while watching the women's olympic triathlon.  Our start times were at 9am, so we planned on getting over to the start line with an hour to spare to ensure a good warm up.

The race itself was pretty uneventful.  There isn't too much strategy in an individual TT besides just "going as hard as you can without blowing up."  If that sounds painful, then you are right.  This course was relatively flat and non-technical, so the goal was to go flat out for ~60 minutes and try not to die.  I started out pegging around 300 watts, but after 15 minutes or so this turned out to be slightly ambitious.  Luckily, I realized this soon enough not to completely trash myself, and overall I was pleased with a pretty high and constant effort.  As it turned out, this "pacing strategy" turned out to be a good one.  The course was actually a slight elevation rise into a headwind for the first half and the latter half was a slight net downhill with a tailwind, so it actually paid off to start out hard for the first half (24mph) and then cruise/hold on the back half (27mph).  The course itself was slightly longer than 40k at around 25.6 miles, so I ended up just barely squeaking under an hour for 1st place in the Cat 5 category.  All in all, it was a solid effort with nothing left on the table, and it's always fun when you can stand on one of these things:

on the podium looking at the wrong camera