MATTS Cherry Valley 30K Time Trial
April 22, 2007 – Cherry Valley, IL
Cat 4 – 6th – 48:01.45
261 watts – 23.4 MPH
April is a packed month for TTing in the Midwest. It’s a chance for riders coming out of their winter training to gauge their fitness before the summer racing season takes off. In fact, I had nearly 6 straight weeks of TTs from April to May. Yikes! Thankfully, most of the early seasons TTs are shorter and not as demanding as the average 40K. Having a TT almost every week helped me mentally, because I finally started to see my season start to take shape. I had felt mediocre about my results thus far in the shorter TTs, so I was looking to the longer 30K TT in Cherry Valley as a chance for me to improve.
The weather couldn’t have been better for April with temperatures around 80 degrees F under bright sunny skies. The only downside was a 10-20 MPH headwind on the way out. The Cherry Valley course is the typical out and back course with a few rolling hills. I was hoping for a fast time even with the wind.
Start times were delayed again, so I was able to get in a longer warm-up. The Cherry Valley starting area was situated in a nice park near Rockford about 90 minutes from Chicago. There was plenty of parking available, but the actual start line was about half a mile from the parking lot.
My start went well and I got into a good rhythm. The last few miles on the way out were difficult, because they were slightly up hill to the south and into a nice headwind. In this stretch, I passed a number of the people ahead of me. I’ve always found this to be very motivating. Kind of like the greyhound chasing the rabbit. After the turnaround, the next 3 miles were awesome. I was able to average about 30 MPH with the tailwind.
The finish also had a slight uphill to it, but I was really able to hammer it. Crossing the finish line, I knew I had a good time. I’ve learned that my placing in shorter TTs is not as good as the longer, but I thought I’d get into the Top 5. When the results were posted, I was stoked to find that we had 4 XXXers in the Top 10 in Cat 4. Afterwards, I went for a nice mountain bike ride in Rock Cut State Park. If only all of spring weekends were like this in the Midwest!