CCTT #5

I was "supper pumped" (man trip joke) about the race yesterday. It was great weather all day and little to no wind. My goal was to break 24 min. I rolled to the start ~7pm, just as this big ominous black cloud started to roll in. I thought it would hold off for at least another 25 min as it didn't seem to be moving that fast. Anyway I started, easing in to the effort for the first couple of minutes. I felt fairly good, then right before the turnaround, the wind reared it's ugly head. The brunt of it hit me past the Forrest section, with a massive 20+mph head/cross wind the last ~3 miles of the race. I hadn't left a whole lot in the tank, thinking I would have little wind the whole race, and I wanted to keep my effort steady most of the race. I went from turning over a 53x11-13 most of the race to 53x21 into the headwind, which also coincided with the small rises in the course on the way back. I also got rained on the last 4 min of the race. What a way to finish. I was pretty pissed when I got back about a situation I couldn't do anything about. Ty was waiting for me inside Tim's truck trying to stay dry, and his assessment of the race was about the same as mine.
Anyway, I turned a time of 24:42 good enough for 11th place.
Got leap frogged by several guys that had early start times. Looks like most times for the early guys were ~1 min faster, were mine was ~ 30 sec. Only thing to compare was that the rider that takes off 40 sec in front of me is also Cat 3, and we had basically the exact same conditions. He has been consistently 5th or 6th every week about a minute faster than me, but this week he only got me by 6 seconds. He probably had a bad week, but I'm gonna tell myself that I'm just getting faster.