So much for the mild / dry winter... Seems like the past week has been filled with rain and crazy wind. I opted to do the BME Racing Saturday morning ride from the Pali YMCA at 0730am, over the Pali, out to Hygenic, then back to town via Mokapu and Makapuu. Turned out to be a pretty good ride with no rain and some time spent going fast.

After the ride I took another one of the ARE (Architect Registration Exam)... #4 out of 7. Hard to say how well the multiple choice section went, but the graphic seemed to be easy. Fingers crossed for a pass letter in the mail!

I spent the afternoon inhaling food, then decided to go and do a hot lap of Tantalus. It looked dry when I left my apartment, but that changed about half way up... Rain, rain, and more rain... The Tantalus side wasn't super wet, but Round Top was pretty wild. I think I went through a set of brake pads on the descent.

The next race I'll be doing is Tantalus TT on April 4, so until then I'll be doing intervals / climbs on days ending with a "y".

I spent Sunday catching up on sleep and procrastinating about going riding, or surfing. By the time I hit the road it was pissing rain HARD... Couldn't find my rain cape... Skinsuit, jersey, armwarmers, clear lenses... Go! The weather dried up about 5 miles into the ride so I decided to venture up the access road above the entrance to Hanauma Bay. A few friends had done it and it sounded nasty, so I figured I'd check it out. I'm training on 53/44 rings right now, and that combined with another mechanical reason, I was stuck to climbing that biatch in the 44 x 15. Not sure exactly what the grade is, but it felt like 15% or steeper. The road is also narrow so doing the paperboy weave isn't much help. After getting to the top and snapping some photos, I watched a storm roll in from the east...

The weather turned heinous in a hurry and the ride home was a wet one!

Mr UPS should have a nice box of Dura-Ace 7900 parts sitting for me when I get home tonight. With some luck, I'll hopefully have my Scott Addict R1 up and running this week. It's going to be so sweet to have a bike that weighs 13lb + some change after hauling around the 22lb Scott Speedster all winter.

Posted by mzagorski at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that I've got the first couple of short time trials out of the way, and the cancellation of Mokuleia, it means that I can spend 4 weeks of quality workouts on Tantalus. Tuesday evening was spent doing a couple climbs starting at the bottom of Papakolea and I was surprised that I could hold a steady 360w for the first one, then 355w for the second ascent! Today, I was expecting to be suffering, but the suffering never arrived... I did my first ascent at 367w then the second at 372w. My best ever watts up Tantalus was 379w, and that was about 3 or 4 years ago, so it's nice to be cranking out two of my best back to back climbs so early in the season. If I can do 372w now, I've got some pretty big expectations for the race up there on April 4... More watts, less weight, even faster times, and only new Scott Addict R1 race bike. Hopefully all that translates into a wicked fast time... I have a target time in mind, but I'll keep that under wraps until after the race!

Watts, watts, watts, and more watts.

Posted by mzagorski at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Saturday morning I did a pre-Tsunami Pali loop with Mark Little and Alex Tellez... The first wave of the expected tsunami was meant to arrive sometime after 11am, so I figured there was time to fit in a bit of riding. There was zero wind, and the whole island was so quiet it was spooky.

The Tsunami... didn't really happen. Well, it did, but not causing any damage. Just some wacky ocean currents and rapid decrease / increase in tide. Fast forward to Sunday morning and it was ultra windy and raining. It seems like it always rains for Castle TT.

Lined up and ready to rock. Thanks to Rich Cochrane for the photo!

I was 11th rider off, but didn't pay much attention to who I was chasing... I just drove to the race start, got in a plenty time on the trainer, put on the race wheels, and rolled over to the startline on time. I chose to run the Zipp Super-9 rear disc and 1080 front on my Scott Plasma TT bike. Last year in crosswinds the 1080 was a challenge to control and this year was no different. I hit speeds of 45+mph going past Olomana, again going into Waimanalo, descending Makapu'u, and again in the dip going up the climb to Hanauma. I spent the entire ride gripping the bars for my life, hoping I wouldn't crash, and trying to not think about how f**ked up I would be if I did crash. Thankfully, I didn't crash! I caught my 30sec man going into Waimanalo, then had to pass 4-5 cars on the left side. Sketchy, but I didn't want to lose time and I had a clear shot to pass them. On the more exposed parts of the course I was riding with my hands on the flat section of my basebar, gripping it tight, and trying to lay down as much power as I could. Coming out of the bottom turn off Makapu'u was a challenge trying to keep on my side of the road as the wind and slick roads had me drifting out to the centerline. Butt-clenching ride! I passed my 1min man before Sandy's then powered up the final climb at 450+ watts in the 55t ring. I only had to use my 44t for the first 1min of the race with the rest of the time spent in the 55t.

I crossed the finish in 24min 23sec (my SRM had me at 24:20), which as far as I know is a course record... It's definitely a PB for me on that course and at 29.78mph is my fastest TT ever. Damn, I want 30mph! My time was good enough to take the win ahead of Tony Lang in 2nd and Gary Shields in 3rd.

Results (Top 10) Time / Avg Speed (mph)
1 Mike Zagorski 24:23 29.77
2 Anthony Lang 24:57 29.09
3 Gary Shields 25:03 28.98
4 Kevin Kawainui 25:32 28.43
5 John Flanagan 25:40 28.28
6 Ray Brust 25:41 28.26
7 Carl Brooks 25:47 28.15
8 Tai Bletcha 25:57 27.97
9 Paul Lengermann 26:01 27.90
10 Jason Smith 26:20 27.56

Full race results here.

Posted by mzagorski at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)