hand destroyed tires

Tonight on a day when I really needed a day off I headed to the Marginal for the Beast TT as part of Spin's very fun series of races. Mostly its for their team members but every so often they let in some of us scrubs from other teams race.

This one was 5 really bumpy out and back miles. I and 3 others met along the way to ride to the course for a nice warm-up. But along the way on Euclid we ran through some glass so I wiped my front tire then wiped my rear tire when my finger I swear to god got caught brtween the frame and tire (TT bike-no clearance)and I started to slide as my rear tire locked up on me solid with my finger as the lodging device. I kept it up for a long time, but eventualy my rear tire slid out enough I had to put it down, but sadly I took down Thom Domonic and we hit the ground hard!! Dave and Pete said it sounded horrible.

I apologized to Thom and was pretty embarassed and now with a very numb finger that got trapped, a sore rib or two and Thom with a bruised knee we rode on with me with my tail between my legs.

But we got to the race course and I could tell pre-riding the course I wasnt in race shape. I was on day 8 of solid riding (14 hours last week) and was getting tired.

I started third and after a few minutes i knew I was underperforming. Lately I have been putting out closer to 340 watts for 5 minutes and after only a couple minutes I was struggling to hold a max 307 watts (about the highest I saw). My Powertp was dropping data like crazy too meaning i need new hub batteries. SO my averages might be higher, but still nowhere close to what they should have been into a headwind.

I got more motivated coming to the turn around and started to see some respectible speed and was pretty happy on the way back in even though I was pretty low on power tonight. I ended up 2nd by 5 seconds. The winner is a very strong rider who had zero warm-up they call him LeMonster!! I had tired legs so its fair to say had he had a warm up and I had fresher legs we would have been just as close I think only faster.

So I destroyed (literally) a pretty new hand made Torelli Gavia 320tpi open tubular tonight and then lost the TT to boot. Not a great night, but in a way actually a REALLY GREAT night.

Thom and I could have been hurt a lot worse and were relatively unscathed for how hard we crashed. I knew I was down on power bigtime, but still managed a 2nd against a really strong rider.

What a crazy night. Ended great with friends and a few brews at the Lizard. Now off to bed and await the soreness that is sure to come tomorrow. I did a lot of gardening, tilling and shoveling compost over the weekend too. I WILL be very sore tomorrow.

Day off the bike tomorrow for sure!! I need it bad.