Estacada Time Trial

On Sunday I decided to try the Estacada Time trial bike race a day after doing a triathlon. I had been considering doing a time trial stage race later this month where you do 3 time trials in 2 days and thought this would be good practice to see if I could do it. Drove out past the small town of Estacada to a park where there is a sign that says next gas and services 70 miles (The small ribbon of road at the bottom of the hill in the picture is where the race starts). Signed up and got a start time of 12:03, looked at my watch and it was 9:25. So I read the paper and did the crossword while watching real bike racer types pedal on their trainers. I watched one girl (looked at her every so often) and she rode her trainer at full speed for over 2 hours and then went and raced! It was partly sunny when I got there, but it sprinkled at 11:30 as I was getting ready, but only for about 10 minutes. The guy parked in front of me riding his trainer observed that every year in this race it rains around 12:00. At 12:02 I got to the line and clipped in and was held until the clock said exactly 12:03:00 and took off. The race starts out flat and then downhill for a small bit and then gradually uphill for the remaining 5 miles until the turnaround. I was doing good, and felt fine. My goal was 30 minutes or under for a 20MPH average, so I tried to keep it around there as much as possible until it started getting steeper and I tried to do 17-19 then. After the turnaround I knew it should be downhill except it started to rain big intermittent drops which was ok, but the wind was blowing the rain straight in my face. Oh well, it's Oregon and it stopped raining with 2 miles to go, so I tried to keep a 20-22 pace all the way back until the hill by the end. There I looked down and I was going 14- ahhh, kicked it up to 16 crested the hill and pushed the last hundred yards to the finish going 27. Looked at my watch shortly after I crossed the finish and it said 12:33 something. So I turned back to the scorers table and asked my time and they said 30 minutes on the dot! An average of 20 MPH- yeah! The results came out today and I was 4th of 8 in Category 5 and 108th out of 138 overall and that's after doing a triathlon the day before and one minute ten seconds faster than last year.