Fiesta Island 20K TT
March 30, 2014 – San Diego, CA
Cat 4 – 2nd – 28:22
264 watts – 26.1 MPH

Let’s just say this was a unique race weather wise for SoCal. There was a 10% chance of rain in the AM, but when we got up it was sunny and dry. 99% of the time, this would mean no rain. There were clouds off shore, but I thought this was just the marine layer. However, I noticed the clouds were moving on shore. By the time I started my race, it was sprinkling.

OK, a few sprinkles, not a big deal. I’ve had them on this course before. About 1 lap into the race, the rain started to come down harder. I noticed my traction to be slipping, so I backed off on the corners. On one corner, I noticed one of the teams racing the TTT had crashed. Thankfully, they went into the sand and no one was hurt. As it continued to rain, I noticed the road getting even more slippy. Soon, I could feel myself hydroplaning even go straight if I got above 26 MPH. At this point, I didn’t care how I finished and even sat up going into the finish chute as I didn’t know if my brakes would work. My only frustration is that I might have set a PR for this course, since my legs were feeling so good… 🙄

So, what caused the course to be so slick. Well, there is normally lots of slow moving vehicles (think old RVs) that drive around the island. They off course have oily residue coming out of them, which then gets soaked up my the road surface. Of course, it rarely rains in San Diego so that oily residue just sits in the road…until…it rains! Thus, that’s why it was so slippery for our race. In fact, I don’t even recall a race in the Midwest having conditions this treacherous during the rain.

Here are a few photos of Rose courtesy of Allan Crawford: