June 5, 2005, Thunder Road Time Trial, Masters 45+
Sahuarita, AZ   15.5 miles

After having a tough time staying with the leaders during last weekend's Criterium, I thought maybe I should work a bit on some staying power. During the last week I tried to alternate hard training days with a rest day, rather than multiple rest days, and then would cap it off with a time trial on Sunday. However, I didn't recover very well, and the hard days couldn't be hard enough, so I probably didn't make much progress with this method. But the upcoming time trial was close to home and included a section of road that I have used for training runs, so it would be interesting to also race on it. I haven't been training this year for time trials and frankly they're not much fun (unless you win) as you just work at your steady state maximum and never get a rest. My goal was to try to maintain a steady heart rate as previously my efforts had fluctuated quite a bit, which is not the most efficient way to pull off this event.

I was fully expecting some good riders to participate in the 45+ class that I had no chance of beating, but if a couple of them didn't want to make the early morning drive from Phoenix and I had a good day, then I might recover my entry fee if I could place in the top three. Registration was from 5:30 am to 6:30 am with the first rider off at 7:00 am with riders leaving at 30 second intervals. At registration I noticed that David Beirne and Don Williams (from Phoenix) were here and I knew they would be faster than me. The course headed East up Sahuarita road for 7.75 miles at a fairly steady 1% up hill grade and then back to the same point. The weather was great, clear, no detectable wind and in the upper 70's. The course record was set back in 2003 with a time of 33:22.

There were 9 entrants in the 45+ class, but everyone started in the order they registered, so the classes were not grouped together. I got to the line just before my start time and had a clean start. I was careful not to start too fast as I had a ways to go and the slight climb would take it's toll. Within half a mile my heart rate was up to 178 and for the first 2.5 miles I was able to keep it between 179 and 181, doing in the neighborhood of 25 mph; not bad if I could maintain this all the way to the turn around. I was able to keep my heart rate in that range for the next two miles, although the speed slowed down due to the terrain getting a little steeper. At mile five I began to falter a bit, but was able to keep 178 bpm on the monitor. Soon after that, my one minute man, David Beirne, went flying past me. By mile 6 I was back into my 180 +/- 1 bpm range, but not moving real fast, seeing the speed drop below 20 mph at times. As we got to within a mile of the turn around, another rider passed me. It took 21:46 to do the first leg up hill. I was very impressed with the clear turn-around marshalling: one official was 100 feet before the turn just to the left of the shoulder line standing at a road sign and yells "turn around the cone" and there's just a lone traffic cone in the center of the road just ahead.

For the first three miles on the return leg I was doing a great job on maintaining my effort, being steady between 180 and 182 and sometimes getting over 31 mph. Unfortunately I was not wise enough to pick out some landmarks during the first leg and with a little more than four miles to go, I spotted what appeared to be some commotion on the side of the roadway that I assumed was the finish booth just a mile ahead. I picked up the pace to drain the energy I had left to reduce the time and my heart rate was at 188 for about half a mile before I realized that I still had a ways to go. I throttled back down to 182 to 184 wondering if I might be able to maintain that effort until the end. However I was quickly running out of steam and was struggling during the last 3/4 of a mile, which is also when I got passed by another rider.

I was fairly satisfied with my better pacing and I put it about where I was capable of. My average heart rate was 180 bpm, although my average speed was a disappointing 24.7 mph. I just don't have the steady horsepower to match some of these stronger riders and probably never will.

About 7 minutes after the race as I was warming down on the bike, my left calf cramped severely; better after the race than during. In conclusion I performed pretty much within my expectations. I got some hard riding in and my lungs were no longer wheezing, so I think the anti-biotics were successful. I'm a little dismayed that I was feeling wiped out most of the rest of the day, but this may be due to only 3 hours sleep the night before.

David Beirne won the event in my class, as expected, with a very strong 34:00. Don Williams took second. Out of the 9 in our class, I finished 6th with a 37:44, 6 seconds off of 5th and a long way from the top riders. However, if I had entered the 35+ race rather than the 45+ race, I would have won 3rd place (there were 4 places in 35+ with $75 in prize money and 3 places in 45+ with $60). One of the riders in the 1-2-3 class set a new course record at 32:47. My UPS delivery man also participated and beat me by almost 2 minutes, getting 2nd in the Class 4 race.

Summary
Start
Time		 Distance
(Miles)		 Starters Duration Weather
(Deg F, mph)		 Climbing
(Feet)		 Speed avg
(MPH)		 Speed Max
(MPH)		 HR avg
(BPM)		 HR max
(BPM)		 HR waking
(BPM)		 Calories Burned
(Kcal)
7:19 am 15.5 9 37:44 77, Calm 480 24.7 35.9 180 188 48 344

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