Long, fast weekend

What a beautiful weekend for bike riding. On Saturday, I did a nice solo ride up the lakeshore to Cedarburg, where I delivered a cassette to a teammate. Somehow, I underestimated the round-trip mileage and ended up with a 70-miler. It was nice, though. Just a bit more than budgeted.

Sunday was my first TT of the year. It was held at the Bong Recreation Area - the same course as the state championships, which will be held this coming Saturday. I set a course record of 51:35 at last year's title race, but that was in late July, with a full Superweek of fitness in my legs. My goal yesterday was to hold a power output equal to about 90% of what I did last year. As it turned out, that's exactly what I did. The result was a time of 55:04 - pretty good considering the ~15mph wind that was blowing. When I left, my time was the second fastest by four seconds.

I was a bit bummed to have missed the victory by such a slender margin, and to have been three and a half minutes slower than my previous time. However, with a couple corrections, I'm confident that I can improve significantly for this coming Saturday's state championship. In particular, I will not:

• Do a hard 70 miles on the preceding day
• Warm up for only 25 minutes
• Wear a standard, non-aero helmet
• Start out too hard

I'll focus this week on getting two high-quality rides on the TT bike and arriving as fresh and well-prepared as possible for Saturday's race. It's the first of my major milestones on the road to the National Championships, so I really want to do a good ride.