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 in two weeks. 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 the 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

My next race will be another time trial – the Alpe B’luez TT – which concludes with a long climb up to the Blue Mounds State Park. 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.

Here’s a parting shot from the drive down to the race, taken through my dirty car window.