Thunder Road TT 2014
Aggress brought home some $$$ today! Five podium spots!
This was my first normal TT on my TT bike (an old Quintana Roo Caliente), I had ridden the Sonoita-Patagonia TT. So, I was excited. Beyond that, I picked up a set of Zipps from a friend (Joe Puchi), a 303 up front, 404 in the rear, yesterday…double excitement. Just carrying those wheels around in my car doubles the value of the vehicle!
In preparation for the TT, and with a nod towards the ShowLow race, Tim and I had a good ride yesterday with a pair of short intervals and a 15 minute interval up Whipple (he punished me uphill). I slept well and felt great this morning. Warm up was wonderful and I hit the line ready to go. My plan was to hold back my effort for the first five minutes and then open it up. My limited experience told me the first ten minutes really hurt no matter what … yup, it did.
After about three minutes I was in my 11 on the rear and only going around 24 mph … I’m a little slow upstairs sometimes, I was in the small chainring. I’ve made that mistake before! I don’t think it hurt my time too much, if anything it helped me hold back for the first five minutes.
I was passing people like crazy, I hit 27 mph on the way out and was thinking that surely I’d blow up. I didn’t know how far out the turn around was, didn’t look at the distance displayed on the Garmin (it’s amazing how cognitively deficient I become in a TT. I wonder how it could be lower than under normal conditions while leaving me with the ability to process oxygen). At the sight of each cross street I hoped and prayed for the turnaround, 215 pounds doesn’t like going uphill much. When I finally saw the turnaround there was a traffic jam of about 4 or 5 riders. I backed off my effort a bit so I could slam it on the way down. The garmin said I hit 42, but I’m not sure about that accuracy.
On the way down I had a hard time maintaining my effort as I’d become satisfied by the speed I was producing. I could use a power meter. I crossed the line and my clock said exactly 36:01, was 36:05 officially. That was good enough to earn me some fancy money.
Of course all of the congratulations were nice, but I was happy with my effort. I wasn’t nervous about the results, only wondered if I had beat Tim … I hadn’t. He beat me by 15 seconds.
It was great seeing so many Aggress riders getting envelopes “full” of money today!
–Phillip Brown
Aggress Results:
41:50
| Rider | Category | Time | Place |
| Tim Scott | Men 35+ | 35:50 | 1st |
| Gus Amado | Men 35+ | 38:20 | 6th |
| Rich Horn | Men 45+ | 38:26 | 3rd |
| Mark Mandel | Men 55+ | 41:50 | 10th |
| Rick Ellwanger | Men 70+ | 40:18 | 2nd |
| Phillip Brown | Men 5 | 36:05 | 1st |
| Brandon Steinmann | Men 5 | 38:34 | 3rd |
| Shane Castle | Men 5 | 38:49 | 4th |
