Friday, May 7, 2010

Decent Night at the Track


I recently had a decent night at the track. No, my name is not Glen Fullerton. On Wednesday, May 5th we came up to Charlotte Motor Speedway for my seventh run at the 10 mile bike time trial.

My dad went first right around 6:30 and we all cheered him on for his seven laps! After that, I jumped on my bike Holman and began a quick warmup on the sidetrack. It was also very nice to see my co-worker Sharon and her friend Russ show up to see what all the fuss was about!

Going in, I knew the PR to beat was 25:50 set in May of 2007. My mean time was 27:02 with a standard deviation of 48 seconds. The 2009 campaign was mildly disappointing (27:06), so the goal for the night was just to go under 27 minutes.

The temperature was about 80 degrees with a 6 mph wind in the usual direction. Here were my splits for the night

lap 1 - 3:42 (23.2 mph)
lap 2 - 3:43 (23.0 mph)
lap 3 - 3:44 (23.0 mph)
lap 4 - 3:38 (23.6 mph)
lap 5 - 3:43 (23.0 mph)
lap 6 - 3:50 (22.4 mph)
lap 7 - 3:47 (22.7 mph)

I maxxed out at 27.1 mph on my cycle computer, an improvement from 26.2 mph last year. The only real disaster was the penultimate lap, but I reset with what little I had to make a good run at the finish. I was mildly surprised half way that my left aerobar was somewhat loose! My official time was 26:03, only thirteen seconds off my PR! Not bad at all...

Last year there were 284 finishers, and I finished in the 172nd slot overall [0.61]. In my M30-34 age group, I was 8th out of 16 [0.50].

For 2010, there were 268 finishers and I slotted in at 148 [0.551], which was an obvious improvement. Officially (but not officially officially until May 12th) I am part of the M35-39 age group. This year I was 9th out of 15 [0.60]

Afterwards we went back to Charlotte and celebrated with a fabulous outside dinner at Dilworth Neighborhood Grille - good times!