Indoor Time Trial #3 was today. I was out sorta late last night, but still got up and went, and wasn't all that sleepy, so that was good, particularly since I had to race at 9:30, which is significantly earlier than my other two races. This is the most training (all sports) I had done in a week leading up to a race. I definitely felt it, and not in a good way. My goal going in was 18:30 (20.1mph), and I maintained that for about the first 2.5 miles. Then mentally and physically I really started to hurt. My brain was like "this sucks" and my body was feeling very weak, sore, and tired. I came SO close to just quitting, but no WAY was I going to do that.

I tried to focus on my breathing and just making sure I didn't drop below 19mph too often. I knew the girl to my left was going to kick my booty, but I wanted to beat the other two girls in my heat. The one on the other side of "fast girl" was trying to catch me in the last mile and a half, which really pushed me. I was so afraid that she was gonna get me. She was behind distance-wise, but was going faster than me when I started to die and lose speed. All I did was try to stay even with her speed, which was tough. With about .25 miles to go, I decided to just go all out and sprint and get this painful race over with. I was hanging around 22-24mph for that stretch, which was good, but kind of bugged me, since I obviously had something left that I hadn't been able to tap into earlier in the race.

My average speed was19.7, but I was so tired that I forgot to look at my exact time. It was between 18:30 and 19:00. I was happy to break 19, but was a little bummed that I didn't hit my goal. When they post the results later tonight or tomorrow, I'll update this with my time and place. Fast girl had her "best time ever" and broke 17min. Crazy fast. I didn't let her speediness distract me, though. Also, everybody was really nice to me today, which was cool. The girl working the computer was encouraging me, and the girl to my right was friendly, too. Oh, and the guy who had to unhook my bike from my warm up trainer because I wasn't strong enough. :P

Update: My actual time was 18:53.16 (5th place for the day). Unfortunately, I dropped to 6th place in the overall standings (adding together best flat + best rolling time, which will then be added to the outdoor time trial time). I am currently 15.17 seconds behind the 5th place girl and 16.21 seconds behind the 4th place girl. I have one indoor race left (another rolling course) and the outdoor 10 mile time trial to try to bump myself into a top five spot. I think top 5 get plaques, which would be cool. Gives me something to shoot for! Grr, if I had hit my goal of 18:30, I'd be in 4th place overall!