January 1st - Today I Raced

The San Bruno Hill Climb has kicked off the NorCal calendar for years and years....yet until today I'd never toed the line of this classic New Year's jaunt. Well, today I changed that and jumped in for the fun, part of my re-integration with racing after only 7 races in all of 2013. This was my first ever Masters 45+ 1/2/3 race, I didn't know the course, and had no idea what a "fast" time was, but figured it had to be around 20 minutes or so.

Here is the course:

And here is the race file:

Of course I started a bit too hard - like 420W for the first minute too hard - and then watched nearly the entire field ride past me as my average power just kept plummeting - 395, 390, 385, 365....and so on it went until by the end of my 21:00'ish minute effort (I had it at 20:57 on my clock) I was averaging a rather paltry 285W. I might have stayed above 300 if I'd started slower and ridden my own pace instead of trying to light up the start climb...which is only 7-8%, but felt plenty steep! I did the first five minutes around 317W, the second five minutes around 268, the third five at 274W and the final 6:00 at 290W.

Anyway, Normalized power (which is probably marginally worthwhile here) was 297Wn, so pretty close to my "target" of 300W and under 20 minutes. On the plus side I saw a couple of the gals from Team Ole out to race, - Lori and Cha Cha - and that's always a fun proposition as we get along great and banter back and forth in rapid succession. Lori almost had me convinced to buy her Range Rover, but it isn't a pick up truck!

here is the video of my "race"....pretty funny at about the 1:00 mark when guys just start flying by me!