The Northern Virginia Senior Olympics (NVSO) 10 km time trial was held at Northern Fauquier Community Park, Marshall, VA, on Sunday, September 8, 2013. The course was a 6.2 mile, rolling hill, loop course on the rural roads outside the park.
This race was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. I estimated my start time to be around 8:16 a.m. Turned out that the organizers were anything but organized. There were radio problems and glitches with the timing equipment. The first rider didn’t start until almost 8:45 a.m. Any benefit from a warm-up routine was long gone. When I finally started my race, I figured I would use it as a warm-up for the 20 km TT an hour later.
Race replay: NVSO 10 km Time Trial
I knew that I needed to attack the hills between miles 2 and 4 in my small chainring if I was going to have any shot at a fast time. This strategy worked almost perfectly. I switched to the big chainring for the drive to the finish line at over 32 mph. Official time was: 0:17:12.578 (21.67 mph average) for 2nd place.
left: start of the 10 km TT, center: finish of the race at over 32 mph, right: 2nd Place podium finish