MikeZagorski.com

The long and short of fit...

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:43:54 -1000

With less than 6 weeks to go until Master Track Nationals I've been spending most of my time either riding my track bike, or time trial bike. The track bike is fun but sometimes you need a break from the fixed gear! My TT bike is a 47cm Scott Plasma Ltd and the track bike is a 51cm Cervelo P3T. The Plasma feel so good that I wish Scott would make a track version, however, they don't. I've asked! My latest challenge is trying to make the Cervelo feels as good as the Scott... Which due to the difference in frame sizes, is challenging. They both have the same seat, a TT specific Fizik Ares with a short nose which allows me to hug the UCI 5cm rule. Hey, for a 5'10" dude I have short legs! Both bikes also have a Zipp Vuka aerobar setup. Tonight I rode the TT bike pretty hard for close to 2hrs which reminded me how good it fits, so I spent more time tonight measuring the positions of both bikes. If I could just take a hacksaw to the Cervelo and remove 4cm of frame, I'd be fine!

Once in a lifetime!

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:36:50 -1000

The title of this post sums up my Saturday experience. I was fortunate enough to get an invite to tag along on a RIMPAC mission last Friday. Unfortunately, due to having a day job, I had to turn down getting to fly from O'ahu and over the Big Island in a C17 with the rear of the aircraft open, and a pair of F16's flying closely behind it! However, I was given a last minute invite to go on a tour of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN76) - The first aircraft carrier to be named after a living (at the time) former president (Ronald Reagan - 40th president of the United States). I met up with a few other people (aka Tweeps) that I'd only ever talked to on Twitter at the Tweet-Up location. We were taken by bus from Pearl Harbor over to Hickam, given some info about our flight to CVN76, then driven out to a C-2A Greyhound. The C-2 is a small twin-prop aircraft! Landing on an aircraft carrier is known as a "trap". An hour after departing Hickam AFB we were advised that we were going to be landing soon. I braced myself for the impact (you go from 125mph to 0mph in 2 seconds. It wasn't too violent as you're seated facing the rear of the aircraft. Facing forward and you'd probably lose your eyeballs. We touched the deck but missed the wire, so had to get back into the air! We got the wire on attempt #2. There are 3 wires on the deck of CVN76 and the target is to hit #2. If you get #1 then you're too low. Hit wire #3 are you're too high. My first "trap" is in the bag, and I have my coin as a memory. The rear of the C-2 opened up and were were greeted with a view of the flight deck, some deck crew, and a few F-18's. Wow, this is really happening! Standing In a place every kid has probably dreamed about since 1986! Our first stop involved a trek down a few flights of stairs to the Commanding Officer's office where we met the higher-ups that run the show! Next stop was lunch! I wasn't sure what to expect in the way of food, but we were treated to a pretty good lunch! Meatballs, turkey and gravy, rice, carrots, etc. A burger cooked to order, some guava juice, and a brownie! At the Reagan Room... That piece of concrete I'm touching is part of the Berlin Wall! Below the flight deck. F18 Hornet. Communications room. On the flight deck to see aircraft take off and recovery (trap). I've realized that you can watch all the videos on youtube that you want, or watch Top Gun with surround sound, but nothing comparesto standing within 20 feet of an F18, getting blasted by the afterburners, being able to feel the heat, power, and roar as it hurtles along the flight deck and into the sky. I wish a lot of my friends could have been there to get the experience. The best I can do is share a video that I took:

Flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan CVN76 During RIMPAC 2010 from Mike Zagorski on Vimeo.

Landing! The wire that's on deck has to replaced after 150 landings. Sitting in Commanding Officer Kenneth J Norton's chair. That's him on the right! Honorary Naval Aviator! I'll update this blog entry later... Lots more to add! I'd like to thank Pacific Fleet, Pacific Command, and everyone aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, and the 14 countries taking part in RIMPAC 2010 for a truly unforgettable experience that will be hard to surpass!

Kauai Stage Race - TT

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:00:43 -1000

After work last Friday I headed over to Kauai with Maui-based team mate Jeff to throw a few watts around the Garden Isle. After wanting to take right's when we were meant to go left, and left's when we were meant to be going right, we made it to the Kauai Inn, conveniently located a mango throw away from the Saturday morning TT course. Last year's 10 mile TT stage went awesome until about mile 5.5 where I flatted my rear disc. I rode that sucker to the finish risking making it a $1500 TT. The end result was something like 6th place and an intact wheel. The 2010 race had a few changes. No more pancake flat drag strip on south-west Kauai. No pointy helmets. No wind slicing wheels. No triathlete-esque aerobars. Just pure balls to the wall standard road setup, athletes-hour style racing over a course profile with more humps that a camel. Jeff and I rolled out of the Kauai Inn and rode the 1/2 mile to the start. 2min warmup. We saw Jason Smith roll a 26min ride so that gave an indication of what duration of effort we'd be looking at. I was 31st rider off and had a few rabbits ahead of me for a little Elmer Fudd action. 5..4..3..2..1... GO! I got the bike up to 30mph and rode the first part of the course in that ballpark over the first flat section of course around Nawiliwili Port, then hit the climb pretty hard. The next 4 miles or so were spent trying to poke a small hole into the wind, while trying to get out the max power possible. Sometimes I'd rock out the slouched over the front of the bike with forearms sitting on the tops of the handlebars - invisible aerobar style, climbing in the hoods, or just rocking out in the drops, while keep an eyeball on the SRM to see which was squeaking out more speed. 0.1mph here and there is all it takes to win. I had almost caught Jeff who was my minute-man at the turnaround, then about 1/2 a mile into my ride back to the start / finish, I see 4 cones on the road. While I knew that the course was a straight shoot out and back affair, I guess I decided to go with being obedient and took a right turn... About 3/4 mile later I realized that I was going the wrong way. Not long later, one of the race volunteers Leo from Kauai drove by me while I dropped a few F-bombs. I got into the back of his truck, went back to the start of the race, rolled around for 1 minute, then had another crack at the race. I'd already gone pretty damn hard the first time so the second time wasn't what I'd call a happy time. Not many rabbits to chase as most people were already done racing, so I just had to go out there and hammer out whatever watts were left in my legs. I got to the base of the final descent well within Jason's 26min time and emptied the tank to cross the line with a time a little under 24 minutes. I had no idea if I had won or lost, but my mind thought that I'd probably lost by 30sec or so. After a few minutes, the results were posted and as it turned out, I won by about 20sec over Tony Lang. Close one!

From Chubby to Fast!

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 12:40:18 -1000

Seen as my own blog posts have been minimal and less rant-induced as they once were, here's a link to a friend's blog that provides some good entertainment. Alex's latest batch of posts about his transformation from a 185lb office sloth to a 120lb wicked fast runner makes for some interesting reading. The dude also maintains a crazy banana intake that would have the monkey's at Honolulu Zoo going ape! Alex Tellez's blog.

K-Edge

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:44:25 -1000

My really nice Scott Addict came with one of these ugly pieces of plastic to save the frame in the event of dropping the chain off the inner ring... Ugly... Thanks to some photos of HTC-Columbia's bikes and an internet search, I sourced these bad boys via Lance and Mark at Sinclair Imports... Enter the K-Edge Chain Catcher. A nice piece of bike kit, machined in Boise, ID. OK, some will argue that it's a $40 product doing the same job as a $10 piece of ugly plastic, but it looks pretty damn good, right! Gold for the Addict, and black for me Plasma Ltd. Front view. Rear view.

Hawaii State Road Race

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:00:51 -1000

I woke up today after a good 6 hours of quality coma time, rocking out the compression socks, then waking up my legs with a roasting hot shower. We drove south of Kona to the start of the road race at the Pu'uhonua O Honaunau national historic park. The Senior / Master men fields were combined, and we had to do two big loops of a course, with 2 smaller loops per lap at higher elevation. The section of course closest to sea level was on a single lane road with a good 2ft drop either side into some nasty looking lava rock. Not somewhere you would want to land! BME Racing doing a little pre-race stretching. I nudged the page on the flat / rollers section for the first 20mins of the race along with Jason Smith and Kevin Kawainui from Tradewinds. When we hit the first climb, Jeff Roberson (BME Racing) and Penn Henderson got on the front and ramped up the pace. We rode up there at tempo, then made a left-hand 180 onto the first of two smaller loops at the top of the course. A few of us put in a few attacks but nothing too aggressive. On short uphill section of road I did a seated acceleration at 500w, looked back and saw that I had 30ft on the group, so I took off and got down to business. I got myself into an low aero tuck on the bike, and used the downhill section of road to press on at +/- 40mph... After a few miles I was eventually reeled back in, and supposedly it took 3 guys working together to catch me. Hey, got to make it interesting! The next big lap and two smaller loops were like the first, except our group whittled down rider by rider until it was myself, Tony Lang, Ray Brust, Penn Henderson, and an Aussie (Ben). Ray and Tony are in the 40-44 age group, and Penn and Ben were in the 30-34, so barring any mechanical problems, I had my 15th Hawaii state championship title in the bag. We stayed together until the end of the race, then right after the final lump of road, Penn attacked with about 500m to go. I took a gamble and hoped that he'd gone a bit early. I waited... waited... waited, then with about 250m to go launched my attack from 5th wheel in the group to fly past Penn (fast enough that he couldn't latch on my wheel) to take the win by about 10 bike lengths. Phew! I'm so happy to get #15! Rolling across the line at 40+ mph on my Zipp 202's. The course was awesome and the racing was very positive. No bullshit, everyone putting in an equal share of work to animate the race and initiate splits in the field. The perfect example of how racing should be! Casey was on a bad day and abandoned the race. Jeff got stung by a bee on the first climb and also had to abandon. Ed Kurzenski took win 50-54 age group and Voytek took 60-64. Another day of great racing by the BME guys!

Hawaii State Criterium

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:55:42 -1000

Saturday morning started with my alarm going off at a very unreasonable time of 4am! After packing a few last items, I was on my way to the airport to fly interisland to Kailua-Kona with Voytek and Casey. Thanks to some confusion on the start time of the Hawaii State Criterium Championship (it was listed on Facebook as being 10am) we were flying in early... Voytek's race ended up being at 11am, and my race closer to 130pm. Would have been nice to get an extra hour of sleep, but c'est la vie! After we pick up the rental car, I call the hotel to see how early we can check in only to be told that because they're full, we can't check in until 3pm. Ouch. We drove to the hotel anyway, and fortunately Casey's room was available earlier. I walk over to the car to unpack my bike, only to realize that I forgot to pick up my backpack from baggage claim. Back in the car, drive to the airport, deal with 3 different people with 6 different answers, finally get my bag, then drive back to the hotel. I threw my bike together, got changed, then we drove over to the Crit course. 5-turn course, all right-handers, a slight headwind to the finish, a 1-2% uphill grade on the backside, and a lot of idiotic drivers that don't understand "road closed to traffic". Casey and I witnesses two cars driving at each other, eventually stopping about 1ft apart and playing a game of chicken. The person that was right, chickened out and backed up. Tony Lang ticked into his cheater bars poking a hole into the wind... Tony Lang taking one of the primes... I wanted to fry the bigger fish. The race started off like most crits... A bunch of fast laps, a few attacks here and there... Then about 20mins in someone mid-pack overshot a turn into oncoming traffic with a few guys hitting the deck, and the field splitting up. Fortunately I was ahead of the carnage along with Tony Lang, Ray Brust, and a handful of others. Tony took the first 3 primes, I took the final one, then launched my attack after the last corner to take the win ahead of Tony. A very short crit at 35mins +2 laps, but a good leg-opener for Sunday's road race. Second State Champ Win of 2010. Tony Lang 2nd. Carl Brooks 3rd. My BME Racing team mates all raced well. Ed Kurzenski took the 50-54 age group. Casey Tucker won the 25-29. Voytek Szymanski won the 60-64. 4 state champions in one team!

3 interesting days

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:32:14 -1000

Nothing quite ilke a 3-day weekend. Big thanks to King Kamehameha I for having his 200th birthday on Friday! I got up early and drove out to a fun surf spot on the west side of O'ahu. Fortunately, the whole isn't wasn't off work, the waves were 2-3ft and super glassy, and there were only about 5 people out. After a lot of fun catching waves and seeing a large turtle, I paddling closer to shore for some final fun. While sitting about 200ft from the shore, I spotted a dark object about 50ft out... "Oh, cool, BIG turtle... ". I paddled out to see it (not knowing that you're not meant to), got within 10ft, then realized that something wasn't right - the "turtle" had a dorsal fin. Sitting parallel to the beach was a 8-9ft long tiger SHARK!!!... A quick retraction of the landing gear, and some finger paddling back to shore! I caught a few more waves then called it good. Wow, what a day! Saturday I actually woke up early enough to make the 730am BME Racing group ride - A hygenic loop with a venture into Lanikai and Holomaluhia Botanical Gardens before getting caught in a downpour, then roasted on the ride back home through Hawaii Kai. This was my last Pali loop with team mate Casey Tucker before the Navy ship him off to San Diego after the HI State Road Race on the Big Island this coming Sunday, so I'm happy I dragged my carcass out to ride! There was a criterium scheduled on Sunday afternnon over at the Marine Base at Kaneohe. I wasn't full commited to racing it, but decided last minute to meet up with Casey Tucker at Pali and ride over to the race. We cruised over in about an hour and watched Tony Lang win the Masters race. I rode around in the Elite race with Casey and Ben Abney, took a couple primes, had a little dig on the final lap, then sat up with about 300m to go, rolling across the line for 7th. After picking up my $40 in cash from primes, I threw on my backpack then rode home over the Pali back to town. The ride home was rather miserable and I bonked super hard at the end of Kapaa Quarry Road, making full use of the 39 x 25 to get over the climb. As soon as I got home, I grabbed a spoon and attacked half a jar of crunchy peanut butter, then washed that down with a Corona. It was one of those days that had me in need of an ice cold beer! I spent the rest of the night inhaling real food.

Day 1 complete

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:21:11 -1000

Last night was day 1 of my 90 days until track nationals training plan... Nothing like 30 short intervals to whip the body into a lactic haze. Next step - Get the track bike up and running!

Falling down.. and getting back up!

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 14:02:54 -1000

In the hope of maintaining momentum of posting more than once a month, here's an update on what I've been up to. The months leading up to the Tantalus TT in early April were stuffed full of interval workouts. The combination of mental stress from intervals, and missing out on the record by 2sec gave my motivation a swift kick in the balls. I stopped filling in my training diary and can't rememember the last time I imported any of my SRM files into WKO+. I've been downloading them into SRMWIN, but not spending a whole lot of time stressing over the details. Last weekend was Memorial weekend, which meant I had the luxury of 3 consecutive days of no work. I had visions of getting in 3 back to back 100 mile rides, but didn't. Sunday I was also tentatively going to race on Kauai (Pedal to the Meadow) up Kokee, but the pure insanity of a $127 one way return fare on Hawaiian Airlines made me say "f**k it", so I just had a staycation on O'ahu. Saturday I slept for a good 12hrs... or more, then rode for 2hrs in mid-day temps that had me melting like a bar of chocolate on a hot skillet. Sunday and Monday consistent of massive doses of sleep, 4hrs of surfing each day, and refuelling. Since the last weekends ride / race plans went to s**t I decided to use this as my mid-season break from the bike before hitting it hard for the next 3 months before my main target of the season (Master Track Nationals in Texas). The dilemna I now face is that my return flight arrives in Honolulu at 830pm the night before a 112 mile race (The Dick Evans Memorial) which I won last year. I really want to pin a # on and go for win number 2, BUT, if I stick around in Texas for another day, I might have a good chance at bringing back some Stars+Stripes to Hawaii. Winning is never a done deal, but if I was a betting man... So while I spent the past month or so just tooling around (not saying I was riding the 39t for all that time!), I'm now recharged, refocussed, and have a plan for the next 12 weeks. Bring it! Other than the whole cycling / surfing shenannigans, my Subaru now has a fresh set of tires (Thanks VS), and got an oil change (Thanks JM). Nice to have a car that is running super sweet, and learn a little about car maintenance in the process.

Hawaii State TT

Mon, 24 May 2010 15:28:47 -1000

Yesterday was the Hawaii State TT Championship... Individual, and official (USA Cycling) hosted by Quick Release / Bikefactory on the Malaekahana course. 40km of fun. The past week had really good weather, but I got a call from my team mate Shannon at 5am on Sunday to let me know there was 2" of rain on the freeway. Not ideal weather conditions... I'd have liked no, or very little rain, and minimal wind, but we had too much of both! I got to Malaekahana at about 615am. Picked up my race number and timing chip (Finally, a race with timing chips!), got in a spin on the TT bike, then lined up as third rider to hit the road. First guy on the road was my team mate Casey Tucker, my 30 sec man was Dan Miller. I caught Dan a mile or two into the course, but it took quite a bit longer to catch Casey who was on a damn good ride! Unfortunately for me, I didn't feel so awesome. Based on previous results I expected to catch Casey before the turnaround, but that didn't happen. The course had quite a bit of wind to deal with and I spent a lot of the race fighting with my 1080 front wheel. The most exciting part of the outward segment was having to slow down for a dog that walked across the road in front of me at Hauula. I got my first glimpse of Casey after he had made the turnaround and chased him down at 30-33mph riding back to the finish. I finally caught Casey on the run into Laie, and emptied the tank over the final 1.5 miles of the race. My final time was 55min 18sec and I thought there was no way I had won the race. I felt like I rode like shit. Fortunately I squeaked out the overall fastest time by 10sec over Ray Brust, and about 30sec ahead of Tony Lang. Phew, State TT champ for another year! BME Racing was well represented with Shannon O'Shea, Casey Tucker, Voytek Szymanski, and myself all taking our respective State Champ categories, and Darryl Perry took home the silver medal in his age group.

Pre HNL Triathlon TT

Wed, 19 May 2010 00:00:17 -1000

Last Sunday, along with about 18 other lucky people, I got to take part in a 40km Time Trial on the Honolulu Triathlon course ahead of the triathletes. The 6am start wasn't so awesome, but what's not to like about having a race start 1/4 mile from your apartment, no entry fee, a course closed to traffic, and a police escort or sorts! I opted for the "pro-warmup" which entails sitting around until the race start, getting on your bike, then RACE! It's not something that I would advise but it seems to work out OK for me. The course started at Magic Island in Honolulu opposite the Ala Moana mall, headed west on Ala Moana Blvd, then onto Nimitz to the turnaround at Pearl Harbor, back to Nimitz, a hot lap of Lagoon drive, then go nuts back to the start. Nguyen Le from Momentum Multisport was on hand to time the event with the use of his iPad! First race ever with iPad results / timing? So much for a wee black book, a pencil, flask of coffee, and a stopwatch with a 60yr old at the helm! I clocked 51:15 to set the fastest time. Tony Lang was second fastest with 52:05, and Carl Brooks in third with 52:29. The rest of the BME Racing guys rode well - Casey Tucker was 6th in 54:48, Shannon O'shea pulled out a 57:33, and Voytek Szymanski just missed out on breaking the 1hr barrier with a 1:00:19. Next race on the radar it the Hawaii State Time Trial on May 23. Game on!

Sun, Sick, and Surf...

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:19:03 -1000

It's been a LONG time since I was sick... So long that I couldn't remember. I think all of my coworkers have been ill over the past 3 months, and my white blood cells fought that s**t like Manny Pacquiao, but last Wednesday night it all ended. Sick! At least it held off until I have a break in my racing schedule, otherwise I'd have been pissed. Normally I would just keep training through a headcold but I haven't felt like riding, so I opted for saltwater therapy. Yup, that means surfing! 2hrs on Friday, 3hrs on Saturday, 4hrs on Sunday, then 1.5hrs after work tonight. Saturday's session ended with the longboard of some idiot surfing without a leash going airborne and hitting my head. At first it just felt sore, but another surfer pointed out that I was bleeding. By the time I got back to my car there was a lot more blood than I though. No stitches, but close! Right now O'ahu has one SSW swell on the way out and another one arriving, so the waves are awesome. Tonight was 4-6ft with occ. 7ft wave. I really need to buy a waterproof camera so that I can capture what I see out in the ocean as it's very different from what people see from the beach. I've not seen south shore as big as tonight so it was a fun experience... I got 3 really good rides dropping in one some big waves, missed out on one waves I tried to get that was probably more like 10ft (and a good thing that I didn't catch it!), and only one mild injury (burst my lip open on my board). Overall it was a lot of fun. Riding... I've not touched my bike since last Wednesday but I'll try and turn the pedals tomorrow and see how I feel. There's a 1 hour criterium this Sunday, but I'm not sure if I'll race that, or head over to Maui to ride with some fast guys. 4 weeks until HI State Time Trial... First official USA Cycling Hawaii State Championship of 2010... I can't wait.

The past week...

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 21:24:34 -1000

The blog posts have yet again been a little scarce so here's an update on the past week or so. Last Sunday was a team time trial run by local team Cambiamento d' Andaturo. The day included a lot more negativity that I'd care to deal with so I chose to not write up any blog post about it. The short story is that my team (Kevin Kawainui and Jason Smith from Tradewinds, Gary Shields from the Big Island, and yours truly) were on the start sheet as first team off. We're all riding well and put in quite a bit of TTT specific practice, and on paper had a damn good chance to take the win. It's never a done deal, but the potential was there! Fast forward to about 1/3 of the way into the outward leg from Kualoa ranch to Laie and we encounter severely backed up traffic. In this situation, if I was riding a solo race, I'd just wing it, find a hole, and try and get past without losing time. Having three friends racing with me, a little common sense comes into play as I don't want to have them follow me into a very dangerous situation. Anyway, we dice with death, try out best to navigate through the traffic as safely as possible. I had one Honolulu Fire Dept guy in uniform driving his truck within a couple inches of me barking shit out of his window... Nice.. We'll put out your fire and save cats from trees, but fuck cyclists! Not what I'd call a positive experience. So, we make it out of the traffic only to see 3 riders holding up the traffic. For the sake of being nice, I'll leave names out. First question - Why the fuck are there people on the course? Whatever, we get past those guys and get back to business north of 30mph, make it to the turnaround in pretty good shape with all 4 of us together. The ride back into the wind was fairly uneventful. We lost Kevin along the way, but he wasn't at 100% health so I'm happy that he did everything that he could do. Jason was potentially the weakest link based on the past few TT's on O'ahu. I don't mean he's a bad rider, just that if anyone might struggle it was going to be him, and he knew it... The pressure was on. I'm happy to report that he rode out of his skin and laid it all on the road. Impressive! So, we make it the finish in 54mins and some change... Easily a good 2mins slower than we could have done without the earlier delays. At the end of the day we lost by 1 second to the team from the race organiser's team (who we later found out didn't even start on their original start time). Any other time trial I have done would have seen that team given a time based on their original start time. Those are just the facts... Make what you want of those. All said and done, my team know what the outcome should have been, but hey, when you're the race organiser, setting the rules, and the team that you rode on has the win to lose, you're going to look after your guys before handing the win to someone else. Quite sad that this is the second time I've had a very negative experience with this race, and the same organizer. I'm sure this post won't please anyone, but I feel that the truth should be known. I spent the past week just riding my TT bike and having a good time. Tonight I took a break from the bike and paddled out in some pretty cold (by Hawaii standards) weather... Outside of the water it was about 60-65F. When you're accustomed to tropical 85F most days of the year, 60-65 will have you vibrating like a nervous dog to stay warm. It was easily the coldest surf I've had to date, but I caught a couple really good waves and had less than 10 people to contend with in the water. Chilled out conditions in more ways that one. This week my friend Sunny Garcia is competing in the Oneill Coldwater Classic surf competition that's taking place at Thurso in the north of Scotland. They have about a 12hr time difference... Check out the competition live at http://www.oneill.com/cwc/scotland/live and scream at the TV when Sunny is on so that he gets some good vibes and hopefully some big waves to get the job done!

Tantalus Time Trial

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:20:33 -1000

I've had a couple days to reflect on Sunday's annual race up Tantalus, so here's how it all went down, or should I say UP! For once, I got to sleep at a reasonable hour on Saturday night, waking up at 445am on Sunday morning. After a few pre-Tantalus rituals, I grabbed the bike and headed over to the race. It rained for most of the previous week, and Sunday morning was no different. Too much wind, and way more rain that I'd like. It's been a few years since I put any focus into cracking the course record. In 2006 I knocked out an 18:29 on stage 2 of the Boca Stage Race, but that result never appeared to get any recognition. Last year I think I'd only ridden up Tantalus two or three times before race day. This year I made a concerted effort to get there a lot more, training on a 20+ lb bike, then switching to a sub 14lb Scott Addict R1 for race day. Everything went as planned in training... Form on the up, and not overtrained or burnt out going into the race. In the previous two weeks I'd ridden the whole course twice splitting it into two sectors, and the combined time for those was in the 18:45 range. With those kind of rides I was expecting to crack 18mins on race day. I got to the race, picked up my race number, threw on my jacket, then went for a ride up the first 1/3 of the course. I rolled down to the start, rode around a bit more, got my number pinned on, then lined up at 7am. Riding at 400w, I was passing all my time checks 10-15sec ahead of where I was at in training. By the time I got to the intersection onto Tantalus Dr. I was at about 3:35. Everything was going to plan all the way beyond the half way point even though I was holding back a little. I'd been in the same position in a previous year at the race, then blew up at 12mins, so I chose to ride a little more conservatively this time, with the plan of finishing strong. On the upper 1/3 of the course the corners are tighter and with the rain and wind I couldn't rail around them like I was in training, and that dropped my avg power by about 20w. I made it to the bridge / trailhead at the top in 16:25 and figured I had about 2 mins to get my arse to the finish line! From there to the finish was pretty miserable, unloading whatever I had left in my legs, going around the final turn within an inch of the edge of the asphalt... Close to losing it, but I stayed upright, pressing the SRM as I crossed the line. Time?... 18:34. 2 seconds off the record. The complete SRM file from my ride. Photo :Copyright © 2010 Colin Cross. All Rights Reserved. www.hawaiiracephotos.com