Para Nationals TT

[Roland]

Today was the first race of Para Nationals. The TT. It was a tough course, two laps of 10km each. It started on a 100 meter decent, left turn, 400 m flat, left turn, 3km straight (1.5km climbing) , right turn rolling until the turn around. Do the reverse then repeat.

There were only 3 in my category, C5, and 12 total in all the different C categories. Mark Breton (who has represented Canada in Beijing & Athens) was up first, I was up second and Atila was 3rd. Peter King who was in my category go re-classified to C4. We got a starting ramp, which I'd never used before, which was cool.

After the second corner, I could see Mark on the climb. I pushed to close the gap and caught him by the 3km mark. Then I had nobody to chase and I knew Atila wasn't gaining on me, which made it hard to focus. The rolling course made it hard to get into a rhythm as well. Still, I think I rode well, with an average heart rate of 172, I don't think I could have pushed much harder.

My time was 33:51 for the 20.7 km TT. Good enough for first in C5 and 2nd overall in the cycles. Maybe 30 seconds behing one C4 cyclist. After our times were compared against the standard for our category I moved down to 8th, with 84% of the C5 standard. Nobody met the standard as the course was very difficult. I think the winning time was a C2 with 95% of standard. Hopefully they post results soon.

Carly & Jen don't have a laptop with them, so I'm assuming they'll post reports when they get back. I'm sure Coach Peter will post something soon.

[Roland]

Jen & Carly finishing:




Me on start ramp:


Doug on start ramp:


Doug finishing lap #1:


Me finishing:


Karen waiting to start:


Karen finishing:

[Roland]

All photos: http://photos.rabien.com/Road-Cycling/P ... 1616_fmRbD

[Roland]

Results: http://www.tourdebeauce.com/images/stor ... T-2010.pdf

[BearPope Recruit]

Not too much to add about the TT... I agree with Roland that the course was different to anything I’ve seen for a TT so far. And I’ve never had to climb into a portable trailer for a start down a ramp – that seemed silly to me initially but was actually pretty fun once we went down it! My favourite quote from the weekend was Roland’s mom saying to me “I’d be really happy if he just took up knitting!” as he started his race.