It would be misleading to tell you that I placed eighth in my age group in the state time trial championships this morning, without also pointing out that there were only ten people entered in my age group. But it would not be misleading to tell you that I rode what on my terms was a terrific race, my fastest time trial performance and a perfect setup for Moriarty two weeks hence.

The race was 20 km (12+ miles), with almost no wind and a flat-to-slightly rolling course. It’s across open country on Albuquerque’s west mesa, skirting the edge of a clump of dinky volcanoes, up alongside a small general aviation airport called Double Eagle.

The trick in a time trial is to flirt with the edge of the anaerobic threshhold:

That for me is between 167 and 170 hearbeats per minute, and you can see from the graph that aside from a few moments of uncertainty and lost concentration I had it pretty much locked in. (The big sagging tail on the right after 34 minutes is warmdown.) It took about 10 or 11 minutes to get settled, and then it just felt right.

34:17 officially, just a hair under 22 mph – damn slow by the big boys’ standards, but the fastest in my brief time trialling career.