Firehouse 50 Recap

Tandem TT Results

Individual TT Results

4-person TT Results

2-person TT Results

Road Race Results

As always, the Firehouse 50 was a blast. After only 3 30-mile acclamation rides on the tandem with Treb during the last week, we were able to ride a 1:52:53. That's 29 seconds slower than Baker and I ran last year on the tandem. I guess Baker is faster than Treb?

Carla agreed to be our support vehicle again, an followed us throughout the race. We were almost dead last off the start line for the TT, so we knew we would probably be going through a lot of riders, mostly 2-person teams. We started conservatively, and rode within ourselves over the divide. There was a noticeable headwind, but we just ground it out. At the 15 mile mark, Treb managed to inhale, rather than eat his gel, and proceeded to hack and cough the rest of the race. He didn't eat any more gel, and hacked and spit the one he tried to eat all over the front of my truck behind us. Jeez.

The Tandem smoothed out the bumps in the woods, but we had to go through a lot of riders. People tend to ride towards the middle of the road in the woods, so getting by was sometimes difficult. We were never impeded, but we were forced to pass some riders on their right hand side, which is never a good idea.

As always, I was running my Garmin, so I kept a watch on the average speed. I've come to the conclusion this is not a good idea. You look down, and see you need to go faster, but you can't. You're already going as fast as you can. I'm doing my next TT without reading speed. Here are the average speeds I saw:

15 miles - 24.5mph
25 miles - 25.5mph
40 miles - 25.8mph
50 miles - 26.4mph

The tailwind was not as helpful as we thought it would be on the finish run down 63 into Grandview, but we flew as fast as we could. We were a little disappointed in not beating last years time, but very happy nonetheless.

Timmer won the individual TT for the 4th year in a row, just a touch slower than last year. Treb and I were happy to meet our goal of beating him (even if it takes 2 sets of legs to do so). Casper was 2 minutes back, with Shishilla back another 20 seconds. Well done.

Dave Thompson and Kevin O'Connor destroyed the old 2-person TT record in 1:49:28. Wow! The 4-man team from Brones Bike Shop rolled to a very respectable 1:51:50.

After the race, as we bumped into people we knew, most asked "Where's Jordan?" Man is he popular. Carla said next year she's wearing a shirt that says "Jordan isn't here. Think he is?"