Piru 40K TT
June 30, 2012 – Piru, CA
Masters 35+ – 1st – 1:00:46
253 watts – 24.4 MPH

Piru 20K TT
July 1, 2012 – Piru, CA
Masters 35+ – 1st – 29:48:00
257 watts – 24.9 MPH

A couple of years ago, I wouldn’t think twice about doing 60K+ worth of TTs in one weekend. In fact, it was common for many of us to do back-to-back 40K TTs. Most of the TTs here in SoCal are less than 20K, so you don’t get to race longer TTs. Thus, I was a little worried about how I would do this weekend.

The first race was the 40K TT on Saturday. We had spent the night before in Santa Clarita, so it wasn’t as far of a drive as it would normally be from Irvine. A 40K is always a challenge on this course, because you have to do the uphill/downhill/rolling route twice. To make things more interesting, there was a decent headwind on the mostly downhill portion. This meant we would have a tailwind going uphill. While this sounds great, it’s hard psychologically. The weather was not too hot, and the sun came out later. I paced myself well, since my second 20K was faster than my first. I wanted to break 1 hour, but think I held a little back for tomorrow’s 20K.

Sunday’s race was a 20K TT, which was super easy (at least mentally) compared to yesterday’s race. Weather was about the same with a downhill headwind, and uphill tailwind. I didn’t set a PR, but I did post a decent time after having raced  40K yesterday. When I think back to how “easy” doubling up TTs like this was in the Midwest, I can’t believe we did it so often. Then again, this course is much harder than what I used to race there. Also, my body was more conditioned for long TTs a few years ago.

Overall, a great weekend of racing at a well organized event, though I’m not sure if I really want to do this double THAT much in the future… 😉