... And so it begins - again.

Today was the start of my 35th racing season. The weather was cold when Realdo and I arrived at the River Road starting location, a few miles downriver from Baton Rouge. I am not a big fan of cold weather, and with the temperature in the upper 30s, I was hoping that the sun would warm things up quickly. The turnout was quite good for this early-season 2-man Time Trial. Good enough to delay the start by about half an hour. Realdo and I were scheduled to start almost an hour after the first team, so at least there was a lot of time for warm-ups. I ended up riding in shorts with two jerseys and arm-warmers, but kept my warm jacket on until we headed over to the starting line to queue up. By then, it was noticibly warmer - I guess around 44 or so.

Our start was picture-perfect. Realdo had elected to take the first pull and when the starter said "go" he accelerated at just the right rate so that I was never more than six inches from his wheel. There was a moderate wind this morning and from the starting line we headed directly into it for the first quarter mile or so. I looked down at my computer a few seconds after the start and noted our speed - 28 mph. I chalked it up to start line adrenelin as we made a smooth right-hand curve with Realdo still on the front. Within a mile we made a 90-degree right at a stop sign and again it was one of the smoothest TT turns I've ever done. With the wind now at our backs, our speed rose quickly to 28, 29, 30 and for a few moments 31. By now the effort was starting to catch up with me, but I dumped it into the 53 x 13 anyway to take full advantage of the short tailwind section.

Gradually, the road continued to curve to the right and the tailwind switched around, first to a crosswind and finally to mostly headwind. We were begining to hurt, but in a 10-mile TT there's no point backing off to recover. Realdo was taking longer pulls than I, spinning a lower gear at around 24.5 mph. Sitting in his draft, I was comfortable and able to recover quickly and when he would pull off, I'd come through just a bit faster, holding 25-25.5 mph as long as I could.

Each of the last three mile miles was marked by a manilla older duct-taped to the asphalt with the mile marked on it in ink. This particular 10-mile time trial was more like 10.5 miles, actually, but I remembered that from last year. One final effort over the last mile and we crossed the line with a respectible time and an average speed of 26.9 mph. That left us just a few seconds short of the fastest time in the 35+ group, but probably close to a couple of minutes slower than the fastest times of the day.

Personally, I was pretty pleased with the ride. Considering how early in the season it is and my own dislike for racing in the cold, I felt like I was about where I wanted to be right now, fitness-wise. I'm waiting to see the official results, hopefully tonight, to see how we measured up overall.

After the race we had a LAMBRA meeting to go over the revised bylaws, LCCS rules, and discuss some other issues related to the track series and race calendar. During the meeting The Daughter sent me a text message saying that she had won Beam and done well on Floor at the 3-team meet in West Virginia. She said the team kind of fell apart toward the end of the meet, so they didn't do so well team-wise.