Excuses, excuses

My friend J who took me to the time trial told me the best way to prepare was to get my excuses all lined up in advance.
1) It was my first time;
2) There was a heck of a headwind.
I have more, but that seems like a good start.

Overall though, it was a great time. We rode from J's house to the starting point -- which was about 9 miles into a headwind. I showed up a few minutes late, so it was a hard fast ride into a headwind. J kept saying, "we're almost there." Every time we turned, "we're almost there" or "about 5 more minutes."


When we got there, I was surrounded by a gaggle of spandex-clad elite cyclists. It was like being in a foreign country. Folks seemed nice though, and the thing about a time trial, especially for an amateur rider who is focusing on nothing but keep the adrenaline surge from knocking her over, is that it's not competitive. I was just out there to go as fast as I could, not to go as fast as the woman J called "HurriJane" whose sponsorship contract requires that she race (a lot).

We each got our numbers, and they called us out at 30 second intervals. When my number was called, I was trying to remember that J told me to take it easy at first -- that was surprisingly easy to do because the wind wasn't really letting me pick up a lot of speed. Whenever I wanted to stop, I remember the other tip, "Just keep moving." I figured pedaling was better than not pedaling, so I pedaled. After a hard five miles pushing against the wind, a god-send of a woman appeared ahead of me telling me to turn around. The promise of a headwind is a tailwind on the way back. I added probably 7 mph on the way back, and it went fairly quickly, if painfully.

That was a dang hard ten miles. I surprised myself though -- just by going out there. Around mile 7.5, I hit that euphoric phase where I had to laugh out loud, and couldn't wait to do it again.

It didn't last long.