U23 National TT Championship--Maybe this is karma, but I sure don't recall murder-raping any boy scout troops

It's hard to see it in the picture, but there's a hole in that tube. It happened near the top of the first hill, about 10 min into the time trial. I heard a loud pop and a ssssssssss sound, and then it stopped. I screamed an expletive and kept pedaling, hoping to see a neutral wheel pit around the corner. There was no pit, but my wheels felt strangely okay. I decided that after the sudden pop, it must have plugged itself somehow (a mixed blessing), so I kept going my pace.

Upon closer inspection post-race, it seems that the tube popped, and the pressure from that explosion unseated the clincher tire from the rim, but the tube still held air from being pressed against the tire.

I'm obviously quite frustrated, since I focused a lot on this race over the last month, and I did everything right. I had put that tire and tube on a few weeks ago, and raced it several times without incident. I guess that's how things go sometimes. The good (bad?) news is that I'm not sure how much it would have mattered had nothing gone wrong. Looking at the power file, I can see where the flat occured, and it only took me 25 seconds of panicking before I started to ride hard and steady again. I think that would have put me in the top 10, and then the only things to obsess about are how much time I lost due to a gradually deflating tube (it was very noticable right after the finish, but got me back to the car with plenty of pressure), and how much slower I went due to distraction and frustration. Both are hard to put a number on, but I doubt if it would have made a huge difference. My goal here was to get a result that would score me a spot at worlds, and even without the drama, I don't think I had the legs for that today, plain and simple. The only way to get an automatic spot at worlds is to win it, and Peter Stetina is in a league of his own this year. 

What have I learned? Not that shit happens (I've had that pounded into my head at Redlands, Gila, and Nature Valley this year). I've learned not to put so much pressure on one race. I missed out on Fitchburg and Cascade Classic--where I could have done well--partly because I wanted to focus on this TT. So that was dumb.

I also might have to finally face the fact that I'm not really a time trialist. TTs were where I got all my results my first couple of years, so I jumped to that conclusion, but all of my best rides in the last couple of years have been in hard road and stage races. That means I need to start working on my sprint. Luckily, there are two more national championships this week. Who knows...maybe I'll redeem myself.