Ben Hur Time Trial

Charleton Heston may have recently passed, but his legacy lives on in stage one of the Madera Stage Race... the Ben Hur Time Trial.

Don't know what it is about Madera, but it seems like it is always on the first hot weekend of Spring. Weather was beautiful, Spring is doing its thing in the foothills, and AWfoSho and TK tested their mettle against some of NorCals best today... well, kinda...

TK's day went a little like this: my start time was what? a minute and a half ago? uh oh... guess that is part of the reason we come to Madera. Make mistakes, learn the hard way... when it doesn't really matter... Anyways, TK mailed in the rest of the ride and ended up about 5:15 off the pace...

AWfoSho celebrated his 18th birthday a little something like this: ouch, I hate time trials. ouch, I hate hills. ouch, potholes really hurt my collarbone when I'm in the aerobars. AWfoSho didn't mail anything in... he has a friendly little game going with Greg Andersen, his elite team teammate. seems Greg always beats him in TT's by a handful of seconds. So, the only goal for today was to beat Greg. Didn't quite happen...

it is hard to gauge improvement year to year, as conditions vary. last year AWfoSho was 4:43 off the pace with a time of 36:43. this year he was unofficially 3:55 off the pace at 34:17... is that a 2:26 improvement? or is it a 48 second improvement? who knows? who cares?

DBC Eliters Greg Andersen and Steel Joe turned in times of 34:06 and 33:51 respectively.

TK won't be happy with anything short of a stage win in tomorrow's flat TT. Woulda been fun to see how he compared to the big guns today on the hill, but ciest' la vie.

AWfoSho has two goals in the TT tomorrow... first, beat Greg... second, beat Chris Bowlus (it is a long and complicated story). He'll also be looking for a result in the crit...

speaking of the crit... despite its rather mundane four corners, recent prosey editions have ended with riders up the road. the kidlets will have to keep a watchful eye on things to make sure they don't miss out.

this has been a bit of rambly-prambly. the mind must be mush from all of that Spring sun.

BTW... Cal-Giant's James Mattis won today, unofficially, with a time of 30:22. I believe he was the only rider to go under 31 minutes.