Wednesday August 5, 2009

One week ago I made the long and seemingly arduous journey from Des Moines to Decatur, IL for the Wednesday night Decatur Time Trial Series. Zipp put together a small presentation with Spin City Cycles (the local Specialized dealer) and asked me to attend the event and give a small speech about time trialing the same evening while the participants enjoyed a catered pasta buffet at the restaurant across from the shop. I have only been to Decatur once and it was in 1995 for the Crossroads Swim Meet. At the time I didn’t pay attention to the distance from Des Moines or the length of the trip. So after driving in my car for 370 miles and nearly six hours, I arrived in Decatur (directly at the race sight) about 5 PM, so I had a solid hour before I was scheduled to race. I met the guys from the shop and Greg Kopecky from Zipp was there to help me out. I put the Red Rocket together complete with a disc and front 808, changed into the skin suit, donned the aero booties, and for a short course recon with Greg and Kyle May from Spin City Cycles. My legs were a little tight and I didn’t really feel like I was ready to race a TT, but sometimes that is the best preparation. I decided I would take out the TT relatively easy so I wouldn’t run the risk of blowing up. My legs were tight and not quite ready for the intense effort. I didn’t have the necessary spark in my legs to really jump start the time trial. Nonetheless it was still a good effort on the flat and cornfield protected course. The Decatur Time Trial Series is held every Wednesday during the summer and has both a 20k and 40k distance. The 40k is just two loops of the 20k course. Surprisingly most people opt for the 20k distance, but I wasn’t about to drive 12 hours roundtrip and just do a 20k TT if I had the option of a 40k. I checked out the course record in advance of my journey and found out it was set back in 2005 by a local Cat 1 cyclist at 52:30. This was my new goal for the ride. I wanted my money’s worth on this trip and course record would be just what I needed to make it worth my time. I finished the time trial 59 seconds ahead of the next finisher but a full six seconds shy of the course record. I was a little crushed but still happy to know I recorded the second fastest time ever on the course and that I won a Decatur Time Trial Series Visor for the 60/40 club (breaking 60 minutes for the 40k). I finished the evening with a small talk at the restaurant while people enjoyed cold beer and a pasta buffet compliments of Spin City. The purpose of the talk was to help sell some Zipp wheels for the shop and do a Q &A session with the athletes. I left Decatur at 10:30 PM and headed for home not knowing how far I would make it driving through the night. I was prepared to stop in the Quad Cities but the construction diversion took me around the cities on I-280 so I just decided to keep on truckin’. I made it home about 4:00 AM and crawled into bed feeling like Rip Van Winkle about to sleep for 100 years (or maybe a day).

Sleeping so I can get up and Work Hard,

TJ