Rabbit Mountain
May 7, 2006
A really
cool Quicktime movie of the TT course can be seen here. 
This was a new race for me. I had only ridden
There was also a team time trial offered at this race, but we didn’t get out act together until too late and didn’t sign up for it. I would have liked to suffer with these guys for that. SEAR/DR Horton entered three teams in the TTT. We have biggest team in the 35+/Cat 4’s, but apparently our riders aren’t big fans of time trials.
There is even less to tell for a time trial than there is for a hill climb, but a few details might be interesting. You had to pre-register for this race and then they posted the start times. I checked on Friday and found that I started at 10:29. Bruce was in the coveted last starting position since he was the defending champion. He started at 10:40. Chris Busacca started between us.
I drove out to the start, peed two or three times, checked-in, and pinned on my number. Bruce pulled up and parked directly in front of me and then Kris Thompson rode by. He wasn’t racing today because his Deer Trail injury caused him pain in the TT position. Yet he was out here to warm up with us.
These races offer an excellent opportunity to gawk at incredibly geeked-out bikes. The time trial bikes you see at these things are ridiculous. You see the same thing at triathlons, but you don’t see such exotic bikes at road races. People ride very nice, expensive bikes at road races, but they all look pretty much the same. At time trials the bikes are extremely specialized. Except for a few of us. Bruce, Chris, and I just rode regular road bikes and the only modification I made was to clip on some aero-bars.
I warmed up for about 20-25 minutes, just riding the roads
nearby. Most of the serious contenders were spinning madly on their trainers.
I queued early since you absolutely cannot miss your start time in a time
trial. The clock starts at your assigned time whether you are there or not.
Riders were starting at 30-second intervals and trying to catch your 30-second
man is a great motivation. Officials hold your bike for you at the start so
that you can get both pedals clipped in. For a guy like me, who typically
has trouble with clipping in, this is a nice feature. The officials absolutely
do not give you any sort of a push, though. I was a bit disappointed with
this, but I can understand why. They might not be giving the same push to
everyone.
They counted me down from five seconds and I took off, in too high a gear, barely getting out of the starting block. I was in my aerobars right away, but I had to move out to the brake hoods to switch each time. The course was relatively flat for the first half and then it makes a right turn and starts climbing at a slight, but consistent grade. The final 500 meters climb at 13% and this is one brutal finish. The total amount of climbing is 180 meters (about 600 feet) over the 11 kilometer distance.
My 30-second man rode a time trial bike and even wore a TT helmet. I didn’t expect to see that guy again. My one-minute man told me he wasn’t very fast and that I’d would be seeing him again. He was right. I blew by this guy after only 5 minutes of riding. We had a headwind on this section of the course and I knew it would hurt a smaller rider like Bruce and Chris more than it would me, but there were plenty of larger, more powerful riders than me in this race.
I took time checks on my 30-second man and surprisingly, I was closing the gap. I checked my heartrate, worrying that I might be going too fast, but it was under 170 bpm and I was probably not suffering enough. I felt good, though, and passing a rider gave me confidence. I made the turn off of highway 66 and started the climb at 7m22s into the race. I passed my 30-second rider at the 8:30. Obviously the guy had money to spend on a nice bike, but didn’t have the lungs and legs to stay in front of me. I could see two more riders ahead and I closed on both at a rapid rate. I passed my 90-second guy at 13 minutes and my 2-minute man at 14 minutes.
I suffered as the climb got steeper and took at split at the 1-kilometer-to-go sign. The final kilometer is brutal. The road goes from slightly uphill to a serious grade to very steep. Last year Bruce passed four riders on this final hill. I didn’t have any more riders in sight and just tried to keep the effort high on this final climb. I sat for most of it and spun, but stood and kicked at the end. I clocked myself in 20:16, while my official time was 20:26. I had a goal of breaking twenty minutes and fell short. Oh well, something to shoot for next year. I thought I might have done well, since I had passed four riders, but I wouldn’t know until the results were posted. That’s one of the drawbacks with time trials.
It was a minute or two before I had recovered my breath enough
to speak. I chatted with some of the other races that were finished. A rider
that finished after I did clocked himself in around 20 minutes even. Dang. The one other time that I knew about was faster than
mine. Maybe I didn’t do so well after all. After chatting with this guy some
more, I found out that he was fifth the day before at
I rode back down the hill, looking for teammates Chris and Bruce. I found Chris spinning like mad, as is his style and even with another rider. I assumed he had caught this guy and was passing him. I rode on until I found Bruce. I knew he had started last, but there were two riders behind him at this point and he was closing on another. I spun it around and rode back up the hill to greet my teammates. I kept a watch on Bruce and monitored my watch to estimate his time. I calculated he finished around 20:30 and if I was correct, I knew I must have had a good ride.
At the top, Chris asked me my time. After I responded, he
said, “Nice! I was over 21 minutes. Dang, I need to work on the TT.” I asked
him how many riders he had passed, thinking this would be a gauge of how we
were doing against the rest of the field. He said, “None! One guy passed me.”
Bruce had passed at least three guys, so we might have done okay. We rode
back to the finish, chatting how we should definitely do the TTT next year.
I think we could have a lot of fun with that, even if we haven’t practiced
it.
They posted the results back at the finish and here are the Rocky Mounts’ finishing positions:
5.
8. Bruce Polderman, 20:39
19. Chris Busacca, 21:45
The winning time was 19:23 in our category. I was quite pleased with this result, feeling it redeemed me a little bit in the eyes of my teammates after the previous days’ hill climb. I want to be climber and I like suffering, but I just can’t get my body up the hill very fast. My weight (I outweigh Bruce by 30 pounds and Chris by 10 pounds) isn’t as much of a drawback in time trialing. The hill at the end hurt me, to be sure, but I didn’t spend that much time there. The final kilometer took me 2m52 (this kilometer gained 250 vertical feet).
