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What Ziggy saw:
Category: 4
Result: 3rd
Well, Pinole hurt this year. Mike was kind enough to tow me around the race today.
Our start time was at 8:20, which I almost missed by going in the wrong direction to the course. So we got going, my foot slipped off my pedal right from the start (this after I preached to Mike about getting going before clipping in!), and after a few minutes in, I was in trouble. My HR was pegged at 204 for quite some time, and I ended up spending a good portion of the uphill behind Mike. Did you guys know that Mike does uphill time trials for fun?
Anyhow, we get to the turnaround and I'm a snotty, slobbery mess, and we hit it full gas. This allowed me significant recovery, but we were going so hard that at some points, I couldn't come around Mike. So we ended up finishing strong and passed our one and three minute teams in the process. After the race, Mike and I went for a ride around the loop for the Berkeley Hills RR. This turned out to be a fantastic warm-down. I also found out that Mike took drivers ed. from my uncle while living in Wyoming...small world! Again, thanks to Mike's awesome performance, we were able to sneak into the top three, and perhaps the top ten overall. I'm not sure where Tim saw the results, but I'd like to see where we placed overall.
BTW, Larry Nolan and Ken Carpenter (I think) did the TT twice, turning in the days two best times, separated by only a second, and beating the guy in third overall by only .7 seconds. The Dynamic Duo of Adam Switters and Daniel Holloway raced together today, and put the hurt on pretty good too.
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What Mike Z. saw:
Category: 4
Result: 3rd
As Brian Z said, we started at 8:20. I was a little nervous because when the 8:18 group was supposed to go off Brian Z still wasn't at the start line. He was using every minute to warmup that he could, which was better than the 8:18 group because they were 100 m from the start line holding a bike chain apparently trying to figure out how it fits on a bike. As the 8:19 group rolled away, Brian Z made it to the start line. We started off fast and were cooking along, passing our 1 minute group less than halfway to the turnaround point. We soon caught the 3 minute group as well (remember that we had no 2 minute group), but things started to go bad for Brian Z. I think it would best be summed up by "jour sans" or is it "sans jour"?
Anyway, I think that Ziggy was kidnapped by aliens and they sent an impostor from the flatlands for the last 1 mile of the uphill leg. After struggling up the last bit of the climb, we turned around, stuck it in high gear and flew back to the finish line. It was sketchy going that fast around all those curves on those devil's toys called aero bars, but we made it. Ziggy was doing the last pull so I got out of the saddle and sprinted near the finish line so that we crossed side by side saving that precious 0.2 seconds. Finally, it was fortunate that it was Ziggy's heart rate that was at 205 and not mine, because if it were mine, I'd be in a hospital or a morgue right now.
We did do a lap around the Berkeley Hills Road Race course which is a beautiful place to ride. I did take drivers ed from Brian's uncle who also coached and still coaches men and womens track at my high school in Wyoming. I finished the day off looking at some huge model homes in Hercules (some friends bought a home in that development) and having a big greasy bbq burger at the Red Onion.
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