Last night Tom and I rode the final Time Trial of the season put on by the Vancouver Bicycle Club. It was a blast! I don't know what possessed me to even want to do it, but I set up a short list of goals for the year way back when and only got one completed before last night. I'm pretty sure now that I don't want to do a race at PIR...that would be waaay to stressful, but a Time Trial...that's just me against the clock. The only thing I gotta do is strip my bike down of items that would creat too much drag and too much weight to have to heft down the road, now if I could only get rid of my excess weight hmmm...
So we arrive at the Port Offices and start getting situated and wandered over to see about registering. Well, the guy was more than happy to get us signed up and handed me the clip board with an EMPTY sign-in sheet...NO ONE ON THE LIST! I asked if #1 goes first and he said yes so I then tried to get Tom to take the clip board, but he wouldn't, so I ended up wearing #1 YIKES! I spent a little time being a little anxious over the fact that I would be starting first, but then I decided that it doesn't really matter because at least this way I can keep an eye on other people on the course as they start to pass me...I knew that much for sure.
Since I was to start first, I started to get a little nervous about starting...HOW do I start a Time Trial? I mosey on over to the start in the first position where there are a couple of bike club members and they explain that one will be holding my bike by the saddle and the other would wedge his foot under my front wheel to stop me from rolling away. Oh, okay...got it...now I clip in and wait. The countdown starts at 20 seconds...that just long enough for me to start freaking out again. Calm thoughts...countdown ends and I get a big push off! With 30 seconds between riders I thought for sure that Tom would be not too far behind, but the next rider that I saw was #3 passed me in no time at all, almost as if I were standing still. It was all good now because finally I had someone to look at for a while...until he sped off like a maniac. It was a while before anyone else passed probably another mile or so. Surprisingly, Tom was not one of the people that passed. In fact, he passed me after the turn around...stinker. It was all good, I now had someone to look at - I'm a visual person and need to see other people to know how I'm doing. I finished the course in 33:52. Not a bad time, but if the wind weren't so nasty in the first 5 miles it would have been much better. I'm pretty happy with my time AND I loved being out there.
The other thing that I noticed was that probably 1/2 the bikes out there were Tri Bikes or had aero bars attached...VERY COOL! I think I just might want a Tri Bike....
