This pas week was Empire State Games summer games in which athletes in a whole array of sports from track to cycling to wrestling to synchronized swimming converge in a given city and compete against athletes from other regions. Many of the sports have scholastic, open, and masters divisions. For cycling to compete in open we had to compete in a regional qualifier and raced for our region if we qualified. Masters cycling did not require a try out and also did not come with an assigned uniform that comes in ridiculous sizing. The games are heavily subsidized and part of the package is a dorm room and mean plan that covered breakfasts and dinners. Most of the riders on the central team opted for this dorm and dining option. In past years they roomed all the cyclists together so the whole teams were together. This year, as we found out on the way up to Buffalo it was different. The men were in one dorm and the women in another... all the way across campus. That meant we were in the same dorms as lightly chaperoned minors... giggle and shrieking and carrying on pretty darned late. Us ladies got a bit grumpy with the teenie bopper girls over this, but ultimately we all survived the experience.
Day 1... The time trial. What can one say about a time trial? They hold you up, you clip in both pedals. The start guys says go and the holder lets go of your bike and you are on your way. You make it hurt so good, or stay above a target heart rate, or at a specific wattage you think you can hold for the distance.
We got there in plenty of time to warm up. It was hot. It was humid. The sun was glaring down. And it was hot. I warmed up a bit on the course. A bit on the trainer. I tried to find a piece of shade to hide in while waiting to start. I tried not to focus on how much TT bling was on display. It seemed like the majority of the riders had time trial specific bikes and time trial helmets and shoe covers and they all looked super fast. I had clipped aero bars onto M'Lady. I was offered a pre-warmed up (read pre sweated in) TT helmet on the start line, but declined. They held me up. I clipped in both feet barely. I was as unbalanced as always. I had a very wobbly start though probably still a little faster than starting with one foot down. I went hard. It hurt. I kept going hard. It kept hurting. It took a couple 3 of the 10 almost completely flat miles for me to find a rhythm. The wind was cross but more tail going out and more head coming back. I hit the turn around in a good time. The wind on the return trip nipped at my concentration. It still hurt, but not as good. I gave it my all. but that wasn't quite enough. I was 4th; 1 minute off my team mate from Central who won the gold, and just under 30 seconds out of bronze.
Post race we warmed down a bit, coughed up a few lungs, found lunch (theme for the weekend: eating in places where due to random circumstance service was super slow) and then found a beach on Lake Erie where we became Hamburgers for the afternoon and soaked in the cool water. Then it was off to drive the next day's course and back to the dorms for dinner and rest.
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