TT at Harcourt

Billed as a 20km race, a minor communication issue meant that our race turned out to be 25 km!

The previous day I had 'scoped the course and pegged the turn around to be somewhere near Pollards Road ..a choice that was underlined by the road sign declaring Harcourt to be 10km thataway!

 I finished the race very disappointed in myself since, although I was very aware of the difficulty of the course I failed to do an adequate warm up and consequently ended up in hyperdrive  far too early, having to back off in order to survive.  My disappointment at my finishing time therefore had nothing to do at all with the added 5km and everything to do with my poor judgement.

In hind sight I didn't do as badly as I first thought and hey...it was a  tough course...harder for me than the Kew Boulie due to the length of the hills rather than their steepness....because they actually weren't all that steep.

Knowing how tired I am after a TT race and given the length and anticipated severity of the course, I opted to stay up near Bendigo for another night and so the next day took advantage of another beautiful clear and crisp day to go for a happy happy rural ride.  Sticking with race wheels, since changing from wide  Zipp Firecrest wheels to ordinary width wheels challenges my poor mechanical skills, turned out to be a bad idea both for my hip pocket and also my knees.

'cos while not concentrating as much as I should, my front wheel disappeared into a deep pothole..well ok that's not 100% correct... I almost saved the day but didn't quite react quickly enough.  As soon as I hit the lip I knew the tyre was doomed and so threw out the anchors before it was done for me by the rapidly deflating front tyre..  A catastrophic puncture from which there was no return.

Although I knew where I was, I had no idea at all how far I was from Elphingstone and so was relieved to find a guy working in a paddock who was able to give me the local taxi no.

I guess I should have sat and waited but there was a chill in the air and I preferred to keep moving.  Walking in cleats while waiting for the taxi, even for a brief time/distance (prob 1km), is not to be recommended and  not only  'cos it wrecks the cleats.  My knees have been  a bit twitchy since then and so my training has had to ease off a bit.

Cost: $30 taxi ride, $100 new tyre+charge to glue it to the rim, new cleats, sore knees.
Plan: learn to change brakes to fit narrow or wide wheels.

Flying out 2 weeks tomorrow...not that I'm counting of course.