After work last Friday I headed over to Kauai with Maui-based team mate Jeff to throw a few watts around the Garden Isle. After wanting to take right's when we were meant to go left, and left's when we were meant to be going right, we made it to the Kauai Inn, conveniently located a mango throw away from the Saturday morning TT course.

Last year's 10 mile TT stage went awesome until about mile 5.5 where I flatted my rear disc. I rode that sucker to the finish risking making it a $1500 TT. The end result was something like 6th place and an intact wheel.

The 2010 race had a few changes. No more pancake flat drag strip on south-west Kauai. No pointy helmets. No wind slicing wheels. No triathlete-esque aerobars. Just pure balls to the wall standard road setup, athletes-hour style racing over a course profile with more humps that a camel.

Jeff and I rolled out of the Kauai Inn and rode the 1/2 mile to the start. 2min warmup. We saw Jason Smith roll a 26min ride so that gave an indication of what duration of effort we'd be looking at. I was 31st rider off and had a few rabbits ahead of me for a little Elmer Fudd action.

5..4..3..2..1... GO! I got the bike up to 30mph and rode the first part of the course in that ballpark over the first flat section of course around Nawiliwili Port, then hit the climb pretty hard. The next 4 miles or so were spent trying to poke a small hole into the wind, while trying to get out the max power possible. Sometimes I'd rock out the slouched over the front of the bike with forearms sitting on the tops of the handlebars - invisible aerobar style, climbing in the hoods, or just rocking out in the drops, while keep an eyeball on the SRM to see which was squeaking out more speed. 0.1mph here and there is all it takes to win.

I had almost caught Jeff who was my minute-man at the turnaround, then about 1/2 a mile into my ride back to the start / finish, I see 4 cones on the road. While I knew that the course was a straight shoot out and back affair, I guess I decided to go with being obedient and took a right turn... About 3/4 mile later I realized that I was going the wrong way. Not long later, one of the race volunteers Leo from Kauai drove by me while I dropped a few F-bombs. I got into the back of his truck, went back to the start of the race, rolled around for 1 minute, then had another crack at the race. I'd already gone pretty damn hard the first time so the second time wasn't what I'd call a happy time. Not many rabbits to chase as most people were already done racing, so I just had to go out there and hammer out whatever watts were left in my legs.

I got to the base of the final descent well within Jason's 26min time and emptied the tank to cross the line with a time a little under 24 minutes. I had no idea if I had won or lost, but my mind thought that I'd probably lost by 30sec or so. After a few minutes, the results were posted and as it turned out, I won by about 20sec over Tony Lang. Close one!