The Result

I got to Denver Thursday evening and checked into my hotel.  I went to the riders meeting and met the other racers.  I put my bike together and took it for a test ride before getting dinner at Chipotle.

I woke up race morning at 3:45 and tried to fall asleep.  I got out of bed at 5:45 and got breakfast and rolled my bike outside to a very chilly 50 degree morning.  My bike was loaded into the box truck and the vans pulled away.  I was left behind.  I finally got a ride after 7AM and realized I would not get to pre-ride the course.  
I grabbed my bike and started making preparations to race.  I took my leisure since I did not start until 9:26:30 AM.  I found  a trainer and started my warm-up an hour before race time, pretty much perfect.  I got in a great warm-up and traded some trash talk with one of the Visually Impared riders on a tandem in good fun.
I rolled to the line for my start time and when the holder was keep me upright and I was in the pedals my left leg started shaking.  One symptom of Cerebral Palsy is spasticty and when I get nervous my leg shakes.  So I'm shaking in my pedal when I get the "go" signal and as soon as I started my leg was ok.  
I rolled up to speed on the first stretch and was having to keep myself from going too fast.  The course turned nasty after that.  I took the first sharp turn and was faced with the first hill.  It was short and it was steep and it killed the momentum I had.  By the top I was starting to feel the burning in my lungs.  My legs were fine, but my lungs were on FIRE.  I was feeling the effects of the thin air.  After the hill I came to a long section of S cueves and rode through them pretty fast.  I rode through some very tight turns and started the return trip.  My legs were still feeling good and my lungs were still burning.  I was not accelerating up the hills or out of the turns well at all, but I was able to hold a lot of speed in the flat, straight sections.  I came to the last sharp turn directly into a steep hill.  It was very painful to ride up but the finish was close.  I rode hard to the line but I looked at the clock and knew it was not enough.  My time was 21.52 which was an average speed of 23.4mph.  

I will write about the post-race happenings at a later time.

Quick Update

I am running around and packing everything up so I can leave in the morning.  Allow me to rewind a bit.  I am healing up very nicely.  I have been out on my bike several times since my crash and I feel like I will be racing at 100%.  After I visit the chiropractor this afternoon everything should be just about perfect.  
I am going to be gone for 3 days and my packing list is already 2 miles long.  The amount of junk I have to lug around is phenomenal.  It's not the big stuff that concerns me, as I know I won't forget the bike.  It's the little things like the pump adapter for the disc (race) wheel, contact solution, socks, and other easily overlooked items that can grind a trip to a halt if forgotten.  That's why I made the list, and that's why the list is as long as my leg, which is not all that short.  
I finished all my errands for the trip other than the chiro.  I dropped by the bike shop to pick up some odds and ends, and swung by the bank to get some cash, and picked up my new car since my old one died last week.
Back to packing.