Three Bears TT #2 Race Report (Jimmy)

by Jimmy Davis

I was really looking forward to this particular race because I had made some changes from the previous race which was on the same course. I wanted to see if I was able to produce a better product this time. When I arrived at the race I was glad to see Ken was already there and Gary arrived just ahead of me. It was not long before a JJ arrived and we started getting our bicycles and gear ready. On this race I wanted to make sure that I got a proper warm up at least 20 minutes on the spinner. As the time got closer I started to warm up and I felt pretty good, raising my heart rate several times on the spinning machine as I got ready to go. Soon Gary, Ken and JJ we're off to the race and when my time came I got ready to go and I had to adjust my helmet because I had tried to find a way to listen to music. While I was adjusting my helmet I heard the race director call my name and I thought "Oh no, did I miss my start time?" Yes I did! As I came up to the line the race directors told me you're going to pull up to the line... as soon as you get to the line then you can then take off;  I took off probably 30 seconds late.

My heart rate was beating out of my chest as I had a lot of nervous energy from being late to the start line. Soon I noticed that I was catching the guy in front of me, then I caught another then another and I started thinking to myself that I needed to go ahead and calm down and get into my rhythm. There seemed to be a cross-head wind on the way out, I kept looking down at my power meter, my mph and my heart rate and I could see that I was not at the place that I wanted to be. However, I just tried to maintain my power until I got to the turn around. On the way back it seemed like the headwind wasn't as much of a tail wind as I was expecting after turning around. So, I decided to try to just maintain my power and my rpm as best as I could on the way back.  When the race was over me and my teammates sat and talked for quite a while about the race then we went to go see the results if they were posted. When we looked at the posted result it turns out that I had taken first place. I was very happy because now I'm the Arizona time trial points leader in Cat 5 and no one can catch me now as there is only one more race that counts towards the points. I'm very happy! Now I plan on moving up to Cat 4 after the state time trial championships in September. All in all it was a great time trials season.