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Old 02-22-20, 07:46 AM
  #6015  
Heathpack 
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Bikes: 2018 Scott Spark, 2015 Fuji Norcom Straight, 2014 BMC GF01, 2013 Trek Madone

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Originally Posted by datlas
FWIW riding with friends is more fun and less suffering than racing. Of course, it depends on your goals. I think you have made the right choice.
Well we shall see.

I like the racing but there’s some real negatives to it, being solely a TTist.

1. There’s almost no solid or reasonable aspirational goal events. State TTs within driving distance of me have all been cancelled or rescheduled in recent years, which makes training for them as a goal event very difficult. The USA Cycling National TT is always on a Thursday which they’re not open to changing. This translates into taking a week off from work (need to arrive Tues, which means being off Tues through Fri) and then women are typically given races later in the schedule when heat & wind are more of a factor. National Senior Games is worth doing but the qualifying races are on Tues/Wed which is again hard to accomplish as a non retired person, plus the next race is in Florida in June, ugh.
2. Without aspirational goal races, it’s just racing the same two venues over and over, with no races having much particular significance
3. It’s isolating because you can’t always mesh your training schedule with your friends’ plans, so you ride solo alot
4. There’s no real appropriate race team for me to join to find folks who have similar goals and interests. Most race teams are geared towards mass start racing (because that’s what you need a team for) and TT is given zero thought, it’s not interesting to folks on the team in any way

But workdays I can’t really ride with others too easily anyway. Having a nice challenging workout on my schedule without me coming up with it on my own was a nice luxury. Being able to execute on the TT bike is cool too- it requires a degree of mental focus and being 100% in just one exact moment at a time is very zen and somehow very cleansing to me. Maybe it’s because I multitask all day at work- but the TT work is a cool thing to be. Not to mention that it works a type of fitness that o don’t typically work on my own in a group ride- the sustained threshold effort. It’s an antisocial effort, on account of the inability to chat and the slight drooling.

So for me, it’s complicated. But for the immediate time being, I think a little less structure will be a good thing.
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