Where's the start? TopSport SR Stage 2 TT Pro/1/2

The alarm went off at 5:30 AM. I was staying in Lodi, CA with family and had been woken multiple times during the night by the neighbors dog barking. I looked out the window and it as dark but dry. There was a breeze blowing the trees but nothing like the winds we had the day before.

I packed the truck and swung by the local McDonalds for an egg McMuffin before driving east on Hwy 4 to Copperopolis, the old civil war copper mining town.

I went to the town square and found the GC results. I was 21st on GC and the 12th cat 2 with 6 minutes down on the leader. Only 1 cat 2 was on a different time than me, all the others were on the same time.

I broke out the trainer and started my warmup an hour before my actual start time of 8:14:30. I added 4 hard efforts to get the HR over 160 and really warm things up. The first hard effort felt horrible but each subsequent effort felt a little better.

At 8:00 I jumped off the trainer, pulled on my arm warmers and headed to where I thought the start was but I was wrong. I asked a couple of people and they told me it was about a mile up the road. I had 7 minutes before my start time so I started my TT early making sure I made it to the start just in time. Note so self, read the race bible more carefully next time.
I had 5 people lined up in front of me as they counted down the seconds. I looked up the road and it looked like it was starting out up hill. We were told this was a rolling course and I'd describe it as hilly. In the first few miles I was feeling fairly good, better than I expected considering how the race ended yesterday.

I passed a couple of people and was passed by one guy who stared a minute behind, he caught me within the last 3K. My 30 second guy never caught me. My time was 28:39:00 according to my Garmin. The results showed I was 36th OA which was a little disappointing really. Still a lot of work to do on the TT'ing.

I rolled back to the car and started the recovery for the 3rd stage. This would be a 90 minute circuit race and the wind was picking up again.


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Location:Copperopolis, CA