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| Man vs. Road |
Here is a link to the race deets.
As you can see from the photo on the left, I would have a rocky start. After a dismal day including thunderstorm warning in Cochrane, with large hail, it cleared up mostly right on time. After an adequate warmup, I went to roll out to the start line, going about 0.5 km/hr. Not sure if it was congested, or gusty, but all of a sudden I tipped right over to my left side, and sure enough, as tough as those pedals are to clip in, they are equally hard to clip out of. BAM.
Oh, now get back on and roll to the start line!
Course starts with about 8km of pure, unadulterated, unrelenting headwind (26kmph with stronger gusts). Blood was dripping from my finger too, I must have cut it going down and the pressure on the handle bar was making it come out hard.
Passed Mark, my 1 min man about 4k in, and was gaining time on Walter, my 30 sec man, steadily.
Mike, 30 sec behind me, had not yet caught me. I looked back and saw someone closing in just before the turn. Then I was suprised to find out it was Karel B, not Mike. He was 1 min behind Mike!
Made the turn, and finally some relief. Downhills, great tailwinds. I saw Mike right before the turn, and managed to build a bit on my gap during the descents. I knew the final 500m contained a pretty serious climb though, so I just wanted to hold him off till then.
No sooner had I caught Walter but Mike caught me. I managed to stick pretty close to Mike as we crossed the line.
Looking at unofficial results on Strava, Karel and Isaac both schooled me, and it sounded like my Velocity pal Evan Bayer made them look like pylons!
I'd blame the leg scrape, but the fact that I held Mike to just over 30s is not too bad.
Overall I felt pretty good at the start, and that long straight, slightly rising with some rollers and nasty headwind really felt painful.
Results are here.
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