It was the same L-shaped 40k course as last year. The race flyer has a nice little graph of the course profile. When I say "little" I mean they scaled the vertical axis to make it look nice and flat. It's not. The wind was coming not quite from the south, but not quite from the west either, so it was alternating six miles of tailwind followed by six miles of headwind, turn around, and repeat. It's a very punishing course.
I was the third Cat. 4 off the line. There were several faster guys behind me, and my goal was to keep them all in the rear-view mirror. I started measuring my time split to the next rider up -- mark when he crosses some point, then compare the time when I get to that point. If it's under a minute, then I'm doing great. I'm gaining a few seconds. Can I keep up this pace? Next comes the turn into the wind. Ugh, starting to fade a bit. And it's uphill too.
Eventually I reach the turnaround. Roger yells something to my orange helmet. Now's my chance to see if anyone is gaining on me, but it's hard to tell for sure. The race favorite looks like he's making up lots of ground. But he's still behind me, and I need to keep it that way. Just outlast him through the tailwind (hopefully that will neutralize things) and the final six miles. Speaking of which, where is that tailwind? Oh, right, the mile or two after the turnaround is also uphill. You won't see that on the course profile.
I start picking off earlier riders in other categories one-by-one. This is fun. I make the turn toward home. There's another. I move left to pass, and as I make the catch, here comes this enormous, unsettling roar from behind. It's the unmistakeable sound of a carbon disc wheel. WHOOSH. Nooo!! I've been caught. No state championship for me. But maybe a second or a third place finish. Keep it up. Learn from him. How is he managing to go so fast? I watch his cadence. At this point in the race I can't even match that.
A few miles later I stop the clock at 1:01:58. The official time is 1:02:01, securing me a solid 8th place finish. I've noticed from the past several time trials that the official time is always a few seconds longer than what I record. Well, with no other explanation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's the twin paradox. That's right, bicycles travel at relativistic speeds. They don't call them "time machines" for nothing.