TOTV Day 1

Stage 1 TT

Up at 4:30AM, on the road by 5:30AM, to Mastropietro's Winery in Berlin Center, Ohio by about 7:30AM.

Great setting. Green, breeze, quiet, nice views of the vineyards, a pristine setting. Mmmmm coffee.

Parking lot staging area. Maruts, Srokas, Scott Gartman doing Mercxx style, too. Maybe a TT bike next season. Jim Behrens with the Jittery Joe's crew. Hey! Chris with the family.

Mmmmm coffee. Quick warm up. Start times flying up. 227! That's me. Line up. Heart Rate already at 119 just standing there. 5,4,3,2,1!

Wow HR holding steady at 182! I'm getting it all out on the lumpy fast course.

Finished 11th out of 20 some riders. Beat several riders on TT bikes. The time they recorded seems 1 minute fast. I probably did 14:30 based on my measurement, but was scored at 13:32.

Chris won! Feeling pretty good during lunch.

Stage 2 Canfield Crit

Ride the warm up. Great! nice closed course right downtown. Oops, they decided to switch the direction of the course. Uh-oh. The long drag into the wind is gonna hurt instead of help bunch up the group on a steeper climb.

Hot at the start. Struggling in the heat this year. Dousing myself with water seems to help.

Holding position pretty well, but riding the brakes a little too much on the downhill section. Need to work on that and passing slower riders instead of braking.

Uh oh. Heat really bothering me. More water over the head. Another couple laps a small group drifts off the back on the long uphill. Ugh. The elastic snaps and I'm going backward. Blew up a little. Maybe the field will slow and I can chase back. 5 laps left. I close the gap a little on the next lap, but I'm done with about 3 to go and just want to finish.

Done.