Synergy TT

photo from skinnyski.com

This is my best photo yet. Look at how serious I look.

Saturday was the Synergy TT north of Stillwater. The race flier said all ROY points would be based off the 40k course—then the day before we learned that the cat 4 women only had to do 20k. I was kind-of looking forward to the 40k route. Until I got there and thought “thank god we only have to do 20k”.

The morning temperatures was 40 degrees. Winds were out of the Northwest at 30-40 miles an hour. No, you read that correctly. At the registration we determined Jackie would go off first, I was second, Kristy was going to be third. Jen pre-registered and was the first off for the day. My time to go off was at 9:04am. At 9:00 we started to book it over to the start line we got there by 9:01—I was watching my heart rate monitor and my computer clock closely. When we got to the line they were yelling at us to get up there—Kristy had 10 seconds before she went off. Which meant I was 30 seconds late!! Jackie was 60 seconds late! What really chops my hide is that I’m a stickler to being on time. In most cases I’m too early, but being late to the start line really made me angry. I blamed myself until I heard all of the girls were late to their start time—hum…were all of our clocks off or did they start early? A bike race starting on time is as funny as me saying it’s not going to be a windy day today.

So I’m all a fluster and I’m in head/side winds down in my drops just trying to keep upright all while trying to pick-up 30 seconds of time. Perfect! The race was in a square-like-shape so we started at the bottom and headed north. You could tell you were going to have to hold on tight when you saw the person ahead of you get blown across the road. At least it was predictable and you were on guard.

Once at the top we turned right—thank god for tailwinds. I was able to recoup and pick-up the speed. I took the next left and had to battle it out with a big pick-up truck. My teammate later said she saw me take that corner at the same time as the truck and was worried about me. I saw it but fear was the last thing on my mind. I was thinking about getting around that corner as fast as I could without touching my breaks.

The next stretch was what I thought was the hardest stretch. The winds were deceiving. It was still a cross-tail wind (now that we were going south). A few times I wasn’t paying attention, because I was tired, until I was knocked off the road due to the wind gusts.

On the final turn I was about 50 yards behind my teammate Jen. When Jen took the turn a dump truck took the turn at the same time as her cutting her off. You could hear her yelling at the truck, but he didn’t seem to care that he was effecting the race. There was no other choice three of us riders went around the truck into oncoming traffic. I heard him yelling at us but 1. Dude, bad day to drive on the finishing stretch—no one was about to stop. 2. Why didn’t the lady on the corner stop the truck and inform him of the race? When I passed Jen I knew she would be frustrated—this was her first TT race—so I told her to let it go and finish the race. She later said it helped that I told her to let it go.

I got to the finishing line but didn’t feel so great about my performance. In my opinion when you are doing a Time Trial race unless you don’t feel like you are ready to lose your cookies you didn’t work hard enough. I didn’t feel that way. It was nice to see Larry S. at the finish line—it’s always great to see a old friend at the line. He was going to race the 40k.

We had to wait until the 40k racers were done before they posted the results. Kristy got first and I got 4th. I wasn’t pleased with my performance. Then unlike any other race, we had a awards ceremony. They started off with the Cat 4 women’s group. The announcer said, “For the cat 4 women’s. Third place goes to…Madonna Lindgren!” WHAT? I GOT 3rd PLACE? That’s not right. I later found out that one of the girls ahead of me was placed in the wrong category.

Funny thing about third place was before the race started I was looking at the loot list and saw third place would get Tofsoi glasses. I’ve been wanting a pair of those for some time. I even told my teammate Jackie that I would love to win those glasses. I didn’t care about what the prizes were for 1st or 2nd….don’t get me wrong I would have taken the win.

On one hand I wasn’t happy about my performance but on the other hand I was excited to get podium. What a strange feeling.