Last event of my season turns into another State C...
The 2008 Georgia State Time Trial Championship was held Saturday October 18, 2008. The season started in mid February with the Tundra TT in Atlanta. Needless to say, it has been a long season. The course for the state TT was just inside the Georgia -Tennessee border below Chattanooga. The course was advertised as hilly to rolling terrain. That was very accurate. I don't think there was more than a mile of total flat road on the course. You were either climbing or descending.
It was around 48 degrees at the start and it was windy. The course was in the shape of an "H" and that was a total of 8 turns with three of them being 180 degree turnarounds. The roads were rural and narrow. I lost a lot of time on the 180 degree turns. I had just switched from standard brakes on my TT bars to Profile Design Aero brakes or "speed reducers" since they don't really stop you very well. They took a little time to get used too and I did it on the course. I started out fine and was cautious not to go too hard and blow up before I really got started. I rode a good steady pace and picked it up on every climb. This seemed to work as I noticed the other riders were slacking the hills and speeding down the descents. I overtook between 10 - 12 riders during the race. I lost count at one point - so that is pretty close. There had been a car accident near the first 180 degree turn, so the officials shortened the course by about 3 miles. The final distance was about 21.7 miles. I was able to avg. 25.68 mph on this rolling course. It was good enough to win the cat 4 group by over a minute and a half. It was fast enough to have won the master's group, placed second in the cat 3 or cat 2 group and I would have placed 3rd in the cat 1 group with my time. My time was the 5th fastest overall for the day. I was very pleased with the time and with it I claimed the cat 4 state TT title, I took home the jersey and finished my season with a great feeling.
In summary for the season, I took the state championship in the Criterium and Time Trial. I won the cat 4 Georgia Cup series, which is the largest amateur race series in the nation. I also took the " Most Aggressive Rider" MAR title for the series as well with my sprinting. I have been ranked #1 in the cat 4 TT on USA cycling site and top 5 in every discipline at some point over the season. I have more than enough points to upgrade to a cat 3 and now the difficult part starts - going into that field and not getting killed week in and week out. Good luck to everyone and I hope you had a great season!