After a tough stage race in Oregon, it was good to race in the MABRA region again. I was looking forward to see familiar faces and race in known terrain.

My legs had been dead all week. I had to cut an attempted ride on Wednesday short because my they were not responding. So the Shenandoah TT was a test of how much my legs have recovered.

The course was not flat. There were definitely some hills involved. I liked it!

A friend and I drove the course prior to the race to see what to expect, which I think was crucial to race the course right. I would call the beginning 4 miles definitely as rolling, then a false flat for about 7 miles, turnaround and then false flat downhill onto a turn to a hilly loop. The hilly loop was probably the biggest challenge of the course. The last 10k was a false flat uphill and then rolling uphill.

There were only 2 people in my category and I started second. When I passed my 30 second girl, there was no one in front of me since the Men 1,2 were ahead of us and there was no way I would catch any of them.

My initial motivation was not to get passed again but after a while when the first half of the race went really well, I extended my goal/motivation to sub-one hour. (A lot of people who raced this course probably start laughing out loud right now!). Hey, it went really well for the first 25k or so…and then I hit this hilly loop: the end to my goal #2.

Apart from a minor disturbance, my chain fell off, I tried to find a new goal for the last 4 miles. The time span thinking of one took so long that I already saw the 1k mark.

I have really started enjoying time trials and the hilly terrain made it even more fun! (I know a lot of people might disagree right now 🙂 )

Full results are here: https://www.usacycling.org/results/index.php?year=2011&id=2300&info_id=40322

Thank you, Chris, for putting on a really interesting and challenging TT course!