Sorry for the two and half week delay in reports... with the thaw of the Midwest finally it was time to log some miles in preparation for this week's event: the 6-day, 7-stage Tour of Virginia.
This morning we had a prologue that was originally posted as 5 miles, made it to as long as 5.8 miles by the time the first copy of a race bible was published (yesterday afternoon), was shortened to 4.1 miles in a subsuquent copy of the race bible handed out at the manager's meeting... and in actuality was less than 4 miles. For a TT guy like our own Ryan Baumann, I believe that succession of information lead to an emotional rollercoaster as he worked to prepare himself for the effort at hand. As for me? Well, a TT is a TT. They could have lengthened it to 40k or shortened it to 1k, I'd despise it either way. But you know what happens to guys with attitudes like that? Out of 174 riders, the "luck" of the draw is that I got to be first rider off at 9:01 AM. Good, I say, let's get it over with.
The number that sticks out in my mind in regards to TT's isn't something like 90- for a cadence or 400- as in wattage... it's 111th, as in the place I seem to get whenever I do a TT like at Nature Valley or Valley of the Sun. Today I figured I'd go all out, throw some trick gear on, and shoot for a solid placing among a mostly amateur field out here.
My result... 109th. Damn TT's. In reality, my placing 50 seconds back doesn't mean much when faced with the mountainous 100 mile stages on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So I got that going for me.
Fortunately, TT's aren't about me and are all about guys like new teammate Ryan Baumann. Ryan finished 15th and is quite possibly the U-23 leader going into tonight's 50 minute crit. If Ryan does indeed get to pull on some new threads prior to the start, I'll definitely post some photos.
Stay tuned....
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