tick, tock...

I did race against the clock this weekend, but not on dirt as I originally had planned. I had fully planned to do an off-road MTB time trial this weekend and a tune up for the MTB race season. But mid-week I found out there was a 40k road TT at Monrovia, the old standard central.southern IN course. I usually have a precious few of these per year that I can do due to conflicting events. So although I planned to do the MTB TT, I wasn't totally committed to it and decided to do the road TT instead since the weather looked to be favorable for a long TT. Though the conditions seemed nearly perfect, it was deceptively windy. Nothing crazy, but even 5-7mph wind can mess up a time trial. Plus as I've mentioned in the past, I would prefer and head wind out/tail wind back scenario, given the choice. This weekend was the opposite though; tail wind out/headwind back. These conditions make pacing extra difficult. If you're a strong rider, you can pretty easily roll >30mph out, but then you still have to get back facing the wind. You have to resist the urge to roll 32+ mph, which goes against your instinct to go as fast as you can (hey, going fast is fun!)     
I paced well out, averaging right at 30mph. But the wind coming back wold be my undoing. I just sat and watched my average speed drop. It ended up just below 27mph, which is too slow to PR. I ended up posting a 55.17, which isn't terrible, but about 2minutes off my best. Ah well, good workout, right? I couldn't force myself to do a 1hr threshold interval without it being a race, so whatever.
No racing this weekend, but I have some good workouts planned nonetheless for this week. I may try to get an extra long road ride in Sunday or maybe go MTBing if others want to go.
Speaking of going places, having raced a few times and making a MTB trip to Brown County since having our Mazda 5, I can fully say that car is the pimpness for cyclists. Plus I got the roof rack on so it's carrying capacity/different configuration ability has gone through the roof. It's awesome. If custom license plates weren't o expensive, I'd get one that said "d-shznt." Because the car is "d shiz-nit," but that's probably too many characters. One can dream...