GS CIAO Time Trial
Series
June 7, 2006
GS CIAO and Wild Oats / Al’s Barbershop Cycling Team are putting on a Wednesday night time trial series. This series of five races runs each week from June 7th through July 5th. I figured it would be a good tune-up for the State TT this weekend. I used the gift certificate to Boulder Cycle Sports to rent a pair of Zipp 404 wheels. These are $1750 for the set, but I rented with just my $20 gift certificate. Of course that came out to about a dollar a mile.
I picked up the wheels around lunchtime and then rode from
work back to Boulder Cycle Sports around 5 p.m. This was the race headquarters
and you had to check in here to pick up your race number. I then rode from there
to
I rode the reverse course at a warm-up pace, never going about 150 bpm and rarely above 140 bpm. My average was 129 bpm and I covered the course in 26m40s. As can be seen by the graph below, this is the easy direction, as it descends. Also there was a tailwind going north and a headwind for the TT. Oh the joy.
This was my third TT of the season. In the first one, the Rabbit Mountain TT, I passed five riders, no riders passed me, and I finished 5th. At the Omnium TT, I passed one rider, no one passed me, and I finished 6th. In this TT, I got absolutely smoked by three riders. I mean they passed me like I was riding a tricycle. It was embarrassing. Why did this happen? Because in this TT, you could pick your start time, regardless of category. You just sign up online and pick whatever time works for you. This is great to have this flexibility, but it sucks to be stuck in the middle or Pro-1-2 riders. The only time I saw the rider who started in front of me (by one minute because another rider didn’t start), was at the start. I never saw him again. I know it shouldn’t really matter in a TT, but I really love someone to chase and here I had nothing.
The hill and the wind made it tough for me to get going. Also, they didn’t have a holder at the start, so you had to start with one foot on the ground. My first attempt to get my foot into the pedal had me slip right off it and nearly fall off the bike. It probably only cost me 10 seconds, but not a great start. The first rider passed me inside of six minutes. He made up 30 seconds on me in that time. The next rider passed me inside of 14 minutes and the third rider passed me at 18 minutes. Thankfully no other riders came by me.
I really wanted to break 30 minutes, so that my average would at least be over 20 mph, barely. I just did accomplish this, timing myself in 29:33. That’s a horrid 20.5 mph average for just a 30 minute race. The best guys will be over 26 mph, I’d guess. My heart rate averaged only 162 bpm and that’s pathetic. I need to get this closer to 170. It is interesting to note that I covered this distance three minutes slower than when riding it in the opposite direction as a warm-up. That shows you the effect of the grade and the headwind. I was three minutes slower despite having an average heart rate of 33 bpm faster. I was so slow that I don’t think those fancy wheels helped me at all. I was not impressed with them at all. I’ll ride this with my $200 Forte wheels next time and get a time comparison. But I better improve my effort on Saturday.
I ended up 5th in my category, out of only 8. Will Frischkorn, who started just two minutes in front of me, won the Pro-1-2 category with a time of 23:54! Wow, that dude was moving. Taylor Phinney rode it in 26:36. The winner in my category, Mike Harding, finished in 27:15. I do this again and see if I can break 29 minutes. A 28:47 would have placed me 2nd. I was just barely faster than Jenni Keil, a female racer on our team. She's a studette, though, and beat Sheri in a 5K recently, so she can do it all. There were just 49 riders in all categores in this first race.
