Drove down to Mojave Desert to poach on the SoCal District TT Championships. The good news: placed first in the 45+, a little ahead of Eric Sternlicht, 2005 Masters Natz TT Champ in Salt Lake. The bad news: got to have a look at Thurlow, and what I saw was impressive. The guy just keep getting better, putting about 1:30 into the pro/1/2 field. The worse news: because I'm out of district for SoCal, I can't be SoCal district champion. So no snazzy jersey for me!
The boring part: the course is 5 sides of a rectangle (eg, you ride Side 1 of the rectangle again before you finish; the start and finish are not in the same place like in NCNCA champs). The cool part is that if it's windy, you usually get a tailwind on the Side 1 (which you ride twice), versus a headwind on opposite side (which you ride once). This can get very fast, and is essentially what happened after our Masters 45-49 group finished. So as the day progressed times got faster and faster. This probably helped when Thurlow broke his old course record by nearly a minute.
When us geezers went out on the course, there was a 1/4 headwind the first time through Side 1, then full head wind on Side 2, modest crosswind on Side 3, tailwind on Side 4, and slight tailwind/cross on Side 1 again. Times appear to be about a minute slower than prior year for Masters 45 and older.
Lesson learned: double-register for pro/1/2 and masters, so you can cherry-pick the best start time. Or call the promoter and find out which category races last.
