Today I participated in the United States Masters Nationals time trial. Masters Nationals is an age-grouped championship that is broken out into age categories. For most bike races, masters races are for riders 35 years or older. But for Nationals, the first age bracket is 30-34. Heather and I drove down yesterday and checked into our condo. Park City really supported this event as many of the local resorts have heavily discounted rates for the racers.

The time trial was actually on Antelope Island. There is a road on the east side that heads south a ways. My TT was 34k, out and back. We left early in case there was any traffic from Park City to Kaysville. We got to the island fairly early for my 10:56 AM start time. Since riders had started at 8:00 AM, there were already tons of people parked in the event parking. We had to go to the end of the dirt/sandlot and park next to a sailboat on a trailer in which a lot of huge spiders made a home.

I got a good warmup and got to the start with 6 minutes to my time. I went down the road the other way and then turned around so I made it exactly 1 minute before my time. The rider 30 seconds in front of me missed his start so I was the second rider to go off with the only other rider starting 1 minute before me. I get up on the ramp, switch to the right starting gear and then get on the bike. I started out with a short sprint then eased into it. The course started on a slight climb that is bigger coming back. I knew that I didn’t want to push it so early so I tempoed up it. The downhill was fast and I was in the 11 tooth cog for most of it. Then I eased into a rhythm as the course basically weaved left and right with only a few small rollers before the hill at the turnaround.

Halfway out I could tell I was making time on my 1-minute man and I started to pick it up a little. I tried to take it easy on the turnaround hill but my legs still felt heavy when I stood up after my turnaround. It took me another 10k to catch the 1-minute man then I just kept the pace steady. I pushed the last hill hard and stood up hoping to crest it with some momentum, but when I did I realized that the hill was longer than I remembered when doing it for the Utah Championships two weeks earlier. So I sat down and tried to recover over the top. Once over I slowly clicked down until I finally was in the 11 tooth cog and pedaled as fast as I could. I was flying! I made the 90-degree turn to the finish and stood up and sprinted the last 200M.

My time was 47:38, almost two minutes faster than my performance at the Utah TT. I was happy with my time, but there were 8 other riders who were just plain faster than me. I ended up 9th overall. Not bad, but not the top 5 I was looking for. On Saturday is the road race so maybe I have a shot of making it up there.