Season finale Colavita Greenville #39

Great weather lead to a really good turnout even though it's late in the season. The highest number I saw was 104. I was 7th to go off and had a decent 30 minute warm up in the parking lot. I overheard someone saying there was a headwind going out. Looking at the top of the trees I considered him a knucklehead who didn't know what he was talking about. Dead still.

Off I went. Into a headwind. Knucklehead was right. It was a painful little headwind that kept my speed around 22. Dismal. Since the series was all over this season, it was only the 2nd time this year on this course and I forgot everything I used to know. It made it harder! Got to the turnaround and got my tailwind...wheee. Of course, in a tailwind it's harder to think about your power output because you are already going fast. So I tried to focus on that instead of speed as best I could. Not sure what my exact time was, but it wasn't good, my speed wasn't good (24.0) and my power sucked. Trifecta! No better time to have the season end than right now. I need a break.

I was 4th in my division as a result and ended up 2nd in the season series. The championship medals are cool.

The crew that puts on this time trial series does a great job and you can tell that they care about what they are doing.

Brings me to the point of racing in general. It's a shame that more organizations don't put forth as much effort as these people do to put on events. I guess this series has spoiled me. It's not about door prizes, free drinks, free yogurt, bag of stuff at registration, medals/prizes for winners, etc, etc. It's combination of all the above along with the fact that they have openly listened to what the racers have to say and made changes to their events as a result.

1. Different courses? Done. It could have been incredibly easy to keep the race in Greenville every month. I still would have went and so would have several others, but changing the venue brought new people to racing. At Bellbrook, I parked next to a guy who have never done a race before and only did this one because it was on his home roads. Maybe he'll do another race as a result? Regardless, he had fun and along with a few others that day he was recognized by Roger and applauded by the group for being a 'first timer'. He won a door prize too.

2. Choose your own time slot? This feature made me better able to plan my drive so on a personal note it helped. I had a couple of long drives to plan around this season.

Those are just two things that stuck out in my mind.

I applaud what Roger is doing for the betterment of the sport. I also want to make mention of David Riemenschneider (Big Dave Sports) for taking the ball and running with the sport of road bike racing which many people around here think is dying. For the most part (at least as far as I know) promoting races is an almost thankless job where participants would rather bitch about everything and then do absolutely nothing to attempt to fix whatever it is they are bitching about.

Anyway, that's enough rambling for now. Stay tuned to this blog for exciting posts about winter trainer rides. Today, the time trial bike goes into the basement where it will be in lock down mode on the trainer until March.