Lincoln Mercury Amateur Time Trial

Every Saturday morning there is an "unofficial" TT run by some of the local cyclists on West River Drive in Philadelphia. It's a good chance to get out on the go-fast bike, test new pacing strategies/equipment, get in an LT test, and show off your stuff. This past weekend was the "official" time trial run in conjuction with the Commerce Bank Philly race: the Lincoln Mercury Amateur Time Trial.

This course is a little longer than the weekly time trial; it starts up by the stairs of the Art Museum and heads out West River Drive to the turnaround at Falls Bridge and back. It also gets all the fastest guys in the tri-state area in attendance; not just the local Philly guys. Being that it's my hometown TT, I really wanted to win. Last year I finished 3rd, so I was aiming to improve that by a couple of spots.

On the course, there was a pretty strong headwind coming off the river on the way out which I underestimated a bit, and I really paid for that effort on the way back, dying a bit with about 2 miles left to go. I pulled back the throttle a little to recover though, and was able to finish strong. My time of 17:20 was the best of the day by 8 seconds, even though there was some debate on what my time actually was... a teammate standing at the start/finish said he timed me at 17:10, and then afterwards when I looked at the SRM data, it showed the interval time to be 16:59... so who knows. It didn't affect the fact that I got the top spot though, so I wasn't too concerned.

It was nice to be able to go out and perform in front of a hometown crowd and all of my teammates who came out to race and cheer. Thanks to everyone who was out there helping out!