Yesterday I went to the Fiesta Island Time Trial in San Diego. It was the first time that I have ever been to a race as a coach, and not as an athlete. I have to admit, there was a part of me that missed the excitement. I found myself getting nervous anticipating the starts of the athletes I work with!

The reason I’m writing about the race, is because almost every city has a “local” time trial. These races are a great way to assess your fitness, and also to see improvement over a season. There aren’t many big tt’s in bike races, and the opportunity to perfect your position and technique is awesome.

The other thing that makes the monthly series a great opportunity is that you can practice your pre-race protocol. You can work on fine tuning your warm up, and also test out different strategies. In big races there is too much on the line to tryout different styles. You have to go with the safe or tried and true strategy. But, in a local tt, you can try starting harder than you might think is comfortable, because if it doesn’t work out for you it is not a big deal, but you might find out something important. You might learn that you can go harder than you think, or that you do better when you don’t hold anything back. It’s all a learning process and local races are the perfect place to try out new ideas. There’s always next month to try again!

My athlete’s did great, and the event was a lot of fun.