Mini Camp & San Dimas TT: 1st Race of '07

85 degrees, a thick SoCal Haze and 1500 feet of climbing in 3.8 miles. Thus were the conditions for the first race of the year yesterday at the San Dimas TT. It was hot, it was uphill, it was a TT. I can cope with the first two, I historically don't deal well with Time Trials.

As I mentioned in my last update, this past week Brett and Alex have been out here training with me, putting in a couple of 4.5 hour days in the Malibu mountains on Tuesday and Wednesday and prepping for some race miles at the San Dimas Stage Race. The rides were great, as pretty much any day you ride on the ocean is, and not even Alex's loss of 4 out of 5 chainring bolts could spoil it! Stealing one each from Brett and I got us to the closest bike shop and a straight shot up and over the mountains got us back down to the coast. A huge thanks goes out to my Aunt Laurie and Uncle Larry who let us use their home as a "ride base" this week.

A quick rest day on Thursday brings us back to yesterday's infernal TT. I actually felt great and took a whopping 20 seconds off last year's 45-degree, sleet and hypothermia-fest, but my time still leaves me a bit off where I'd like to be. I can't be too bummed considering I've had about four days of VO2 work all year and I wasn't running any super-special light aero wheels (just my trusty X-Lites and Seca Comp tires), but you always want to do better.

Today we have the Road Race: 5,000 feet of climbing in 72 miles. The race is 30 miles shorter than last year and the two leaders are separated by .63 seconds, so it's definitely going to be an interesting race. It could either be insanely-fast or nerve-wrackingly slow and tactical - I'm not too sure which I'm voting for. I'll let you know in about 7 hours.

-Ebert