I am not a bike racer. At least not this year. It takes a different type of training than preparing for long distance tours. I have started to incorporate more interval efforts in my training, including some climbing repeats.
I did join a racing club in February. The COBRAS is a close-knit group of riders. COBRAS stands for Colorado Bike Racing Association for Seniors. I enjoy riding with them on the weekends and helping out at the 7 ride time trial series that the club sponsor. On Sunday, they had a practice time trial for the coming weekend's Lookout Mountain Hill Climb. This ride is a 4.56 mile, 1300 foot ascent. I went hard from the start, tiring some in the last 1/4 mile or so of the ascent. My time was 30:23. When I got home, I checked last year's times for the 55-64 age group. My time would have been 36th of 44 riders had I participated last year and 5th of 10 within our club. Hard to believe that the winning time in the age group was 21 minutes. Still, I thought I had accomplished much and that times would improve with more hard efforts like this one. The picture is from the ascent of Lookout Mountain.
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