In case anyone reading this has no idea what my last few posts have been about, a quick review: I am in Louisville with Scott Latell for the USA Cycling Masters National Championships. I’m here just for the time trial; not the road race or the criterium. I went off at 8:07 AM this morning and finished 51 minutes and 34 seconds later, for an average speed of 28.2mph.

My target was an average power of 325 watts; that’s what I did at last year’s state time trial. I won’t have the final numbers until I get home and download my PowerTap, but I believe I ended up doing around 330W, making this my best output ever. By that measure alone, it was a complete success. Of course, there were some other fast guys out there at the same time as me. In the end, two in my age group went faster than me. One was Eric Bean, from Madison, who beat me in this year’s state championship. The other set the best time overall, fully a minute faster than anyone else across categories – a freakishly fast 48:34. That’s an average of 29.2mph.

Of course, I would have loved to have won a national champion’s jersey, but I am extremely pleased with my result. I went harder than I ever have, and I’m 100% confident I couldn’t have gone a second faster. Scott has been a tremendous help, and I’ve enjoyed the chance to hang out with him. Now I can look forward to a weekend in Door County with Kelley, a few Superweek races, and whatever else I want to do, be it on the bike or otherwise.

I’ll share some additional thoughts later. For now, I’ll finish with some pictures.