Friday, May 16, 2008

Colavita and Senior Olympics

Last Saturday was the May Colavita Time Trial. The weather started out bad with a cold, thick fog causing our start to be delayed by an hour. But, once the sun came out, it warmed up and turned out to be quite pleasant. I felt pretty good throughout the race and just missed beating my best time by only 4 seconds. This race is all about the wind! Last months time (when we had that horrible wind) was my worst time ever. Now, this month, I've almost beaten my best time. It's really hard for me to gauge my fitness when I'm not consistent with my times. Oh well!

Today was the Dayton Senior Olympics time trials. It had rained all last night and this morning there were still some "lingering showers" in the area. But, by race time, the showers had stopped, but it remained overcast with a temp in the mid 50s. The course they used was a parking area for the local Renaissance Festival and was basically a 1-mile "square".

Being a parking area, there was NO traffic to worry about. And, with all of the rain, and no traffic, the course was very wet- with lots of standing puddles - which made for some very exciting corners. As a matter of fact, I got to see a little to much excitement when another rider passed me on the straight-away and then hit a large puddle in the corner causing his back wheel to get squirrelly. He bailed into a field- which probably saved him from a nasty crash. (Or, maybe he was just practicing for cross season.) Either way- he got my attention!

Another "feature" caused by the overnight rain was the gazillion WORMS on the course. I guess the rain had washed them out on the roadway - only to be smashed cyclist. By the time we had finished the race, my bike was covered in worm "remains". It was horrible! I had worms (or in many cases parts of worms) smashed on my tires, wrapped around my spokes, in my chain, in my derailleurs, under my crank, up in the fork, ... oh, really just everywhere! Needless to say, my bike got a bath this afternoon, and what came off was gross!!!

There really wasn't a very big turn out today. I was the only female racing in my age group. Actually, as far as ladies racing today - it was only another lady and me. But, what impressed me most was the guy that was racing in the 80-85 age group! Now that was Awesome!






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great job! I did the Bike to Work thing and proceeded to bike to WPAFB. I also had worms riding on the suspension with me. At the breakfast, I meet many nice people and got kewl swag.

Two hours from Sinclair Park to Work. I need to calc pace.

Go Fast Pops Team Go!