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.