ire race. I arrived late and missed the race meeting and my number pickup so was assigned another number and didn't have much time to warm up. Little did I realize that the lack of warm up would hurt so much on the ride.Overall, the race went well and it seemed to go as I thought it would. Being sick for the last 2 weeks but feeling a little better left me hopeful that I could do really good today. I thought I was doing well during the race, passing a number of racers that started before me.
On the initial descent, my front wheel (Zipp 1080) started to wobble on the downhill. I'm not sure what was going on so I braked a little and shifted my weight way back on the bike. I think this may have had a psychological effect as I only got the bike up to 62 km/h (last year I got the bike up to 88 km/h) which lasted for the remainder of the race. The downhills were all slower than last year and maybe it had to do with the extra 10 pounds of clothes this year. Good thing I wore extra clothes but my eyes got so cold behind my shield that they really started to hurt.
I kept a good pace and speed on the flats and did a good but cautious job on the downhills. I got killed on the uphill portions, particularly the last part. I just couldn't jump out of the arm rests because I didn't think I could maintain any attack. This ended up hurting considerably and, compared with my time last year, likely meant the difference from my finish and second place.
Overally, I finished 31st out of the entire field (180 riders were scheduled to start). In my age group, I finished 5th. I was beat out of 4th by just over 6 seconds. If I had finished with the same time as last year, I would have finished in 2nd. This is one race that my results were drastically effected by the lack of warm up.