Getting back into it: Grey County Time Trial

So originally I had planned to make a weekend of the worlds qualifier events and stay at Blue Mountain for the weekend. After the P2A crash, I was told no racing for 6 weeks to let the bones heal, so that kind of wrecked those plans. I figured if I crashed in a TT, I would just give up on everything anyway, so I signed up figuring it would be ok.

The course was an interesting one for sure. 29km with 230m of climbing made it a hilly time trial course. Almost complete down hill on the way out, then the last 7-8km was all the uphill. The other odd thing about this event was the start times. I didn't get sent off until almost 8pm, which meant I was finishing with the setting sun. The organizers did an amazing job though, the course was great and completely closed off and everything ran super smoothly. Having Velofix there with bike fixes helped a lot of people to get their bikes to fit the guidelines for the UCI (stupid, stupid rules...).

I am certain the mirrored visor saves like 30watts only because it looks badass.

So I was off and my heart rate monitor didn't work for the first half, so I had no idea how I was doing effort wise. It didn't help that I didn't get a chance to do a hard TT effort in the weeks leading up to see what it felt like. Since it was all downhill, I opted to go easier rather than harder. By the time we hit the turn around my heart rate kicked in and I was able to pace myself well on the "flat" and uphill. When I finished they said I was 5th for the UWCT qualifier for 19-34 age group. Just to finish though felt like a huge mental victory, it felt like they said I set the fastest course time. After the last crash, mentally I have been in a terrible place and doubting everything around me that I have worked for. Just getting to finish the race like it was meant to be done (with your heart rate spiking over 190bpm) felt amazing and I know that it lifted me up.

Picture of the beautiful sky just after I finished!

So overall results were alright, but the real victory for me was finishing and doing about how I expected showing not much, if any, fitness loss. Depending on how the head feels with some harder intervals, I might start back in to road racing with KW Classic. Thanks for following along!

Garmin data:here
Results: here