Rain Pain

I came out of my psychodelic trance just in time to head up to Nichols, Ia for the Iowa City Time Trial #2. It is held on the state TT course and only about a 20 minute drive, so I had this race marked in bold on my race calendar. It was nice to leave at 8:10am for a race that started at 9am.

One problem. It was raining and windy at 8am, so I was debating whether to go or not. Hopefully you can't relate to this, but I had based my training week around this race/workout and really didn't have a plan 'b' for how to spend my morning. So I loaded up my bike and some rain type gear and decided to drive up and ride the course even if it was rained out.

I saw a few cars lined up along the road, and learned that 12 participants had signed up despite the pending thunderstorms.. It actually stopped raining and the wind tamed down a bit (probably around 10mph), so other than puddled roads, we ended up having compatible weather.

I won the cat 3 division by default, as I was the only one. In fact, I believe vitually everybody that showed up managed to take home some sort of prize.

PIE OR BEER... I have to admit, I struggle with this age old question... I opted for the Perkins chocolate cream pie. I am always confused about those prize options, offering prizes like a 6 pack of GU, some waterbottles or maybe even a small cash payout would be much less ironic, and for my troubled mind, much less traumatizing...

Most successful cycling nutritional plans will likely dictate limiting the intake of pie and beer, so sort of fun (in a sadistic sense), to then taunt exercise addicts to 'fall off the wagon' by succombing to their cravings. These prizes are sort of a cruel and unusual form of post race punishment for me. I finished off half the pie Sunday and then curled up into a fetal position and cried myself to sleep. The shame was unbearable the next morning, I couldn't even look at my bloated pie face in the mirror.

I am thankful to the organizers of this series, as I would have one seriously dusty TT bike without it. I have a pretty good lead in the Cat 1,2,3 division of this 4 race series, so hopefully I can hang on and get some sort of merchandise award (Giro TT helmet is one of the awards). On the other hand, maybe they are going to 'reward' us with some sort of beer keg or multi-leveled frosted chocalate cake. Oh... the horror.