Wowsers, I couldn’t believe the crowd at the outlet mall for tonight’s ride. Not sure if everyone just loves a TT that much , or maybe it was just the weather, especially since we’ve been rained out for what, the last two Tuesdays?
Here’s my crazy panorama shot as I stood in the middle of the group and rotated around:
The gravel roads on course ended up being in great shape. Not much loose stuff aside from corner #1 that is usually a little tricky. Not too many potholes either, and for a lot of stretches, the crown was very smooth and fast.
What wasn’t helping us go fast was the wind though. Felt like it was SSW. The opening section on Powell it wasn’t too noticeable, but the the entire stretch along Posey was a pretty tough cross-headwind. Then Bam!, turn onto Lavery and that was the worst of it, but thankfully a shorter stretch.
The return leg on Lawson was mostly crosswind, with just a hint of tail. I know a lot of us were trying to figure out how to maybe twist or turn to take best advantage of the wind.
The one relief was the return on Powell was mostly a tailwind, which was also nice as that section is pretty climb-ey. I saw a lot of PR’s on the segment “Two Humps to go”. On the leaderboard now, 6 of the top 10 were set today.
Here’s the results pulled from Strava. As I mentioned I don’t think too many PR’s given the wind - I know I was about 1:30 off my best time. But hey, that just means next time we can all set new 2022 PR’s