I had plenty to be excited about today although I had a bit of a hectic preparation. Today's Time Trial that was being held on the new extension of the freeway in Joondalup. Bike maintenance has never been my forte but I am quickly learning, so after arriving late last night from Sydney I got straight to work. Putting on time trial bars and changing tyres are referred to as being relatively easy, given you follow a few simple rules. Nothing is simple and I all I can say is I'm glad my housemate was not home to witness the tanty that accompanied my bike maintenance.
It was a beautiful day and there was only a hint of wind. For once I felt like I had a good warm up and my family joined me just before I took off to start. The course was fairly simple go North a few kms, do a hairpin turn and come back with another hairpin turn at the south end. It was a 7km loop that we were doing 5 laps of. Psyche.
I had been reading up on my mental training on the plane ride home so my power words were all set and ready for use. I went well mentally this time, however, I think I let the 2nd lap blues get to me a little bit too much (either that or I went out way too hot). I only lost concentration a few times (my mind can easily wander) but I quickly got myself together. Needless to say, I kept turning the wheel.
Afterwards I heard several people say it wasn't as easy as they thought it was going to be. My first reaction was - it's a time trial, surely you should make it as hard as you possibly can. But what they meant was, we were all hoping for a nice smooth flat road with a really wide turn around and no wind. When I heard about the course I thought I may have a chance of breaking that 40km+ barrier. Well, the course wasn't hilly by definition but there were some nice long uphill drags which could quickly take it out of your legs. I slowed down quite a bit at both turns (going off road once) and things were made just a little bit harder with one of the turns being at the bottom of a hill (slam on brakes, snail pace turn, climb ow ow ow). Seriously though the gradient was miniscule and I shouldn't complain so much.
Today was my third ATTA time trial, I was going for a third 'win' and a third 'course record'. Although for this course a record isn't really applicable as we won't be riding it again.
Needless to say - I was very happy with the results, taking out fastest female. But take a look at the numbers - ie general place, bib and standard place. Freaky considering my own milestones.
The rest of the results can be found on ATTA's website.
1 comment:
Well done Holly - this time trialling business is certainly your thing.
I have a big infactuation with numbers and their meanings and all those 3's is amazing. It was meant to be, great work.
Post a Comment