Time for a Break

Last night I rolled down the to Dover TT with the IBC mountain bike team. There's no particularly good reason for a bunch of mountain bikers to want to go do an eight mile time trial, but our collective reasoning seems to be "Thom does it and he's faster than us." Thus, you get a bunch of hairy legs without aero gear mixed in with the TT-bike crowd.

Five weeks ago I clocked 20:06 here, my first time ever seeing the course. Surely another month of training plus knowing the course would make me go faster?

Ugh... If only. This time around I tried a few things differently, and either due to or in spite of these changes, I was 13 seconds slower. I lucked out with Linnea starting right in front of me, but it took me 12 minutes to catch her and she almost passed me back on the long, gradually downhill second half of the course. For some reason I just can't power along at 25 mph like everyone else. For now, I'm blaming the cross bike and being grateful that I don't road race.

Did another quick mountain bike ride this morning, for reasons unknown. I felt absolutely terrible. I think it's probably time to hang up the bike for a while, but I have a Kingdom trip planned for this weekend. Oh well. After that, I'll rest, I promise.

Edit: I forgot to mention the highlight of the trip back from Dover -- getting yelled at by a guy on a hybrid for riding "two abreast on a narrow road."

Not in a hybrid; on a hybrid. I've got to hand it to him, his indignation was righteous -- I'd hate to see what his reaction is when something actually bad happens. And for the record, there were zero cars behind us...dude.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Dude! You can't take a break! We are all counting on you to race every weekend for the next (and preceding 3 years!).
Colin R said…
I figure if I double up most weekends of cross season I can still get to 52 races in this year.

Holy crap, I just counted how many race reports I've written this year... 28 if you count the Dover TTs and Tuesday night Weston races. So I'm ahead of 1/week pace, awesome!
hey colin, its ben , whats your email?
Colin R said…
colin.reuter@gmail.com. I'm creative.
gewilli said…
yeah you are...

wicked creative...

btw what tires ya running on the TCX?
Colin R said…
last season I ran Mud2 Front/Jet back in the early season when it was hot and dry and I cared more about rolling resistance.

After Gloucester I think I switched to dual Mud2s front/rear and left it like that for the rest of the season... seemed like a pretty good all-around setup, although probably not perfect.
gewilli said…
i was mostly referring to what tires you had on for the TT (assuming you are riding the TCX in the TT)...
Colin R said…
oh. I have no idea, whatever cheap stuff I could scrounge up. They're all just road tires, is there even a difference?
gewilli said…
LOL

yeah - there's a difference...

esp on a TT...

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