Blackdog TT #1

Last night was the first Blackdog TT event for the season. Blackdog is held every other Wednesday in Burnsville. The course is 7.2 miles on the worst road conditions you will ever ride—yes worse than Territorial road. Thankfully they filled in the really bad holes—thus the joke when you go down there—it still wasn’t enough. You had to pick your line wisely and never look down. Not very efficient when it comes to TT-ing. It may not be a bad idea to toss on arrow bars onto your mountain bike and ride the course.

Since this is my first year of TT-ing (I did a few last year) I will be doing all of them on the stock bike—i.e. the Madone. Thankfully Blackdog has a stock category—no arrow bars, no disc wheels, no arrow helmet. Old school.

After warming up on the course for a bit, I forgot my trainer, and chatted with my teammates for a bit it was our time to go. There was over a 100 people that showed for the first Blackdog TT. Impressive.

Points went out first, then OC, then me, then Sherry from Gopher Wheelman. We were going to use each other as our carrot. Most of the ride was a blur so here is what I could remember.

Right out of the gate I hit my AT, there was a slight headwind on the way out but I was able to keep an average of around 20. I kept thinking Sherry was going to get me soon since she was on a TT bike, but I couldn’t see her the couple times I looked back. Really what I was thinking was “I feel like I’m going to die—when will the pain stop!”

Sherry caught me on the turn—I need to work on my 180 turns—so I used her for a few miles as my carrot since I could still see her ahead of me and it took my mind off of the pain. My average on the way back was around 25 mph—I couldn’t breathe but HOLY CRAP that is fast! I made one crucial mistake. Even though I don’t want to know the course knowing where the finish line relevant to the start line on an out and back is VERY important. My mind started to play games with me—I started to think I was getting tired, that the finish was around the bend when it wasn’t—thus I started to slow down a bit. I finished. I almost lost my cookies those last few seconds—which means I gave it everything I had and was happy with my first time out. Now I have a bench mark and can only get better.

Results were posted and I did MUCH better than I anticipated. 4th place overall out of 14 in the stock category with a time of 18:30 for 7.2 miles for an average of 23.4 mph. HOLY CRAP!