The race was well organized and they put on a good race. The food was wanting as there was not much available for non-meat eaters except for the abundance of little gold fish treats (my girls loved them!) and nothing vegan.
The race is situated north of Grand Rapids, Michigan in a rolling flat area. Fisk Knob is a park at the start/finish which is said to be the highest point in Kent County, Michigan. It's an out-and back race with a large T-shaped turnaround. The start/finish is approximately 50m of descent/climbing in the last 600m, so has an incline of about 8-9%. The sun came out about 1 hour before the start of the race and the locals were calling it a beautiful day. It was 6-7c with a north-west wind of about 8km/h, so there was windchill if you factor in the wind resistance.I was really disappointed with my finish because I felt I should have done better. I had a great start with a really great push-off. I got my speed up to 78km/h on the starting descent and knew I could post a great time. But, I didn't pick a good choice for clothing and had too little on my chest/core.....well, that windchill started to kick in because I only had a team l/s jersey and a lightweight undershirt. I brought a jacket which I should have worn over my team jersey. I was gasping for my breath after 2 minutes and couldn't catch it until about 15 minutes into the race. I kept pushing hard with my heart rate at about 93-95% for the 15 minutes. When I finally settled down and caught my breath and brought my heart rate down to 85-90%, I knew my breathlessness was going to hurt the race. So, I just focused on my cadence, keeping it between 98-105 rpm and adding gears when I could.
The flats and down-hills went well but the hills hurt because of the early breathlessness. I managed all the corners very nicely and blasted into and out of the hair-pin turnarounds. I eventually didn't want to finish the race in the last km but pushed very hard with my finishing speed on the huge incline at 21 km/h. I didn't need to see the computer analysis to know where and when things went bad so finishing in the middle of my age group and in the top 25% overall is not too bad. Good thing is that even with the clothing malfunction, I was only out of 2nd by just over 3 minutes. Bad thing is that the early race shows that there are a number of riders ready to race and the top guy (T.L.) was in excellent form as usual.
Full results at: Fisk Knob TT 2010