2010 West Virginia TT Championships - (Season ending on a good note)

Back in the mid to late 90's, I used to go camping/road riding with a group of friends in the Parsons/St. George area of West Virginia, an area I grew to love a lot. And getting there was one of my all-time favorite roads, Route 72. So about three months or so ago, when I learned about the 16 mile West Virginia State Time Trial Championships being held on Route 72, just north of St. George in Rowlesburg, I wanted to do the race very badly.

The race was this past Saturday, September 18, and for about two months leading up to the race, all I did was train for it. I didn't go out for "rides", but instead each time on the bike had a purpose, a reason, whether it was intervals, hill repeats, or a recovery ride. And each ride was done on the time trial bike as I put my bike away until after the race.

I arrived at the race with plenty of time to casually get registered, get changed, and get warmed up. There was no rushing or running around. The race started at noon and my start time was at 12:18. At 12:15 I got into the line to await my turn. At 12:17 I was at the start line being held and ready to go. At 12:18 I was off, all my training and trial-n-error over the past two months were now for this very moment.

I shifted into a slightly uncomfortable big gear and turned my legs as quickly as I could. I got into a nice tempo and was flying. I was feeling great. For the first eight miles of the race I was averaging 27.6 MPH. Not too bad. The turn around point in the race was on a little hill that put a good hurt in the legs, but it also meant that you weren't flying at speed into the turn which was nice, no hard breaking required. As I rounded the orange cone at the turn around for the eight miles back to the finish line, I was able to regain top speed quickly.

With about four or five miles to go, somewhere around there, I noticed myself starting to slow down, and with that I started to panic. See, I wanted a podium spot very bad. I mean I worked my butt off for the last two months for it, and when I started going slower, that began bad thoughts creeping into my head. I was starting to convince myself that I wasn't going to make it, "Your too slow, you went out too fast and now paying for it...", etc. And the funny thing is that the more I thought about it, the slower I was going. Funny how that works. AND... just as all that was going on, my helmet strap came unbuckled, or so I thought. I reached up to re-buckle it and found that it was still buckled, but the strap itself came out of the buckle, so there was nothing I could do about it during the race. So I was having melt-down mind games and was getting slapped in the face by my helmet strap. Things were starting to really suck. But then I had another thought, "You gotta get your mind right boy!" With that, I stopped pedaling for a brief moment, took a real deep breath, put my head down, and started bringing my cadence up and with that my tempo and speed. 23, 24, 25, 26, 26.5 MPH. I got it back to where it should be and then concentrated on my breathing. Short, deep, powerful breaths. I lost a lot of valuable time but wasn't thinking about that at that moment. With the finish line now in sight, I put everything I had into it. I crossed the line at 33 MPH. At that point I had no idea if I made the podium, and it wasn't until around one hour after my finish I learned that not only did I make the podium, but I won! First Place! I beat the 2nd place guy by twenty-four seconds. Wow, I was shocked. Even with my "panic attack" and my helmet strap beating on my cheek distracting me, I made it. That felt so very good. With such an up-n-down season I had this year, it was nice to finish out with this win.