SB Bike Fest Day 1 – Sandpiper Prologue TT

Today marked the beginning of the long awaited Santa Barbara Bike Fest, this year with a brand new event – a time trial out at the Sandpiper Golf Club at the Bacara.

This was ostensibly a “road bike” event, though one look at the course map and you could tell there would not be many funny bikes with aero bars.

There were two dozen sharp super turns, a few grass sections, some gravel, quick little rollers, all taking place on a narrow, off-cambre golf cart path. It was probably one of the strangest, most scenic and most fun courses I have ever ridden. The best way to describe it was a Super-D for road bikes.

I did 3 laps to warm up and went off at about 6:15. Blinger heard me grumbling about my late start and I told him I just didn’t want to have to pass all the old guys which set the stage for a friendly wager over which age group was going to prevail, 30-39 or 40-49. Anyways, I hit the course in the wrong gear and somehow wasn’t clipped in so I bumbled the start a bit. But I regained composure and just tried to power, power, power as much as I could while still keeping it smooth through the corners. Keeping momentum and pedaling out of the corners was key and I was pushing the limits, clipping my pedals and nearly going into the grass on a few sections. But it must have worked since I pulled of a 10 minutes, 27 second ride – good enough for 2nd place in my age group AND 2nd place overall. Thats right Blinger, the two fastest guys were under 40! Gary Douville pulled off the win with a time of 10:06 (Gary, as always, being the statistical outlier) and Big Bob Wilcher made an impressive showing for 3rd.

Fun times. Saturday afternoon is the dirt version of the super D. Then the XC is Sunday. Looking forward to it…