Sunday started early @ 5:30am. Even though the TT was only 15 miles from my house My start time was 7:55am so it was still an early day. I was excited because it was my first time using my new Hed Jet disc (I'll review that later). When I was loading my car to leave I remembered that I hadn't put a magnet on the new disc yet so I ran back into the house and grabbed the extra magnet and decided to put it on once I was at the event and got my bike set up on the trainer for my warm up.
I had a good warm up and the conditions were close to perfect. Temps in the mid 60's and almost no wind. The course was an rolling out and back. There were more uphill sections on the way out and then a bit more down hill on the way back. I started out and felt good but every time I looked down it seemed like I was going really slow so I kept pushing harder and harder to try to get up to the speeds I thought I should be reaching. I hit the turn around and was happy to see that it was on a slight uphill so speed wouldn't be a problem and it was sitting at a section of the road with a turning lane on each side so you had 4 lanes to make the u-turn and carry some speed. This was especially good for me since I'm usually the guy you see locking up his brakes and power sliding around the cone. I looked at my speedo at the turn around and it was 28:xx. I wasn't really sure how this was possible with the speeds I was seeing on my way out.
I started my back to the finish and felt fast but my speeds still looked low. Then I realized that the magnet wasn't registering every time it passed the computer sensor, only like 2 out of 3 times. I was truly turning myself inside out and I was really hurting. When I passed the 35k mark I turned up the pace a bit more and then at 3k I went all out. I was really happy the final 1k had only a small rise and then a gentle down slope to the finish because I was spent.
I finished with a 0:54:37. The only reason I can imagine for this good time was that my computer had tricked me into going out extra hard on the slightly uphill section of the course and then I kept pushing hard on the final half of the course.
It's not that great of a picture but I got my hands on the new 2009 Cannondale catalog today and their new cross bike is beautiful. The back is lightning white, the front is patriot blue, it has race red highlights and decals, and the whole thing is high gloss. It's way too pretty to be a cross bike but I love it. If anyone at Cannondale reads this and wants to donate a frameset or a complete bike to me I'll need a size 54 and will do everything in my power to make a good showing on the bike.
Ladies and Gentleman here it is, the Amazing, Exploding Stem. It's adjustable so you have to tighten it enough so the pivot point won't move. The problem is that in trying to do that I had to make it so tight that the bolt snapped in half. I did the same thing to one of the bolts that attaches the faceplate. I guess it's back to the drawing board for this stem design and to the garbage can with this stem.
