serves me right...

So they call my name to reach the platform for the start of the time trial. I'm supposed to hit the ramp at 9.39am exactly. The starter grabs ahold of my seat or as israelis like to call it, my chair..and he promptly slips and knocks me right over still attached to my bike by my pedals and still in the time trial position. So there I am lying on the elevated platform laughing like mad and I clip out of my pedals, stand up and clip back in again and realize my chain has fallen off. so I hop off again and reset my chain but no the officials think they can do it better. All israelis think that they can do it better. They couldn't and I asked to please hold on a second and had it straightened and back on in a breath. Finally I'm off. Heading down the ramp and I realize that during the fall my gear had completely broken off my bar end shifters on my time trial bars.

But into the race I went. Gear smashing at 70 rpm instead of my time trial revs at standard 95 rpms. Rough as hell. I finished and used every ounce of glycogen in my muscles because I couldn't get my cadence high enough to utilize my VO2 max. Crossing the finish line brought an instant sensation of literally not being able to stand. It was in the middle of the desert and the heat was almost poisonous. The entire time all I was thinking is just get going. Everyone is hurting so just be as efficient as possible and put in the work. Time trials are about redlining and consistancy throughout the effort. Newby's generally put in a pretty J line effort where the hardest effort is at the beginning and then tapers off and then they realize that they didn't go hard enough and sprint at the end but it's not enough for a time trial.

Anyway, I got a massive time penalty because while I was dealing with my mechanical issues..9.39 had long gone by and that is my official start time. Anything that happens to prevent you from starting at your official start time is added as a time penalty. I was sent off last because I was the fastest split but wasted my placing with all the time I had wasted before the start.

It does feel crappy but it felt good to get a really hard effort in. You can always go harder in a competition than in training on your own so I value races and the specific fitness that they bring forward. I do love to race. Funny how I could have just walked away from competitive sport because my heart was too broken to want to continue doing anything. I wonder if we could invent a drug to affect the chemistry of love so that it doesn't affect womens brains to such a great extent... Maybe control the oxytocin, block certain receptors... not such a bad idea. Anything's possible.