State Time Trial Championships
June 10, 2006
Bruce, John, and I rode this thinking we were helping out
the team in the BAT (Best All-round Team) Standings. Unfortunately, it only
counted for BAR (Best All-round Rider), which we don’t have in our category
(35+/Cat. 4). The course was out next to DIA and generally pretty flat, with a
few rollers. I did get into my small chain ring a few times, but it was much
faster than the course I did on Wednesday from
I borrowed Dan Miller’s Rolf wheels for the TT, but these wheels look like regular road wheels, they just have fewer spokes. As usual, I was riding the cheapest bike with the hairiest legs, but this time I had by far the cheapest wheels on my bike. It seemed everyone either a disk, a three-spoke carbon (Bruce rode this), or a carbon Zipp wheel, like the 404, which John rode. Yes, I’m making excuses.
Fifty-three riders were in the start list for our field, but the results only list 43 finishers. That seems strange. Maybe some had flats and called it a day, but not that many. Probably a few didn’t start either. I finished 15th, Bruce was 9th, and John was 20th. It was John’s first TT and he started 2nd. After passing “Metro Eddie” (we have no idea who this guy was, but he was listed in the start list in quotation marks), he had no one to chase. He misinterpreted the marshals at the first turn-around point and blew right by them, losing some time before turning around. Then his aerobars broke on him. Without these mishaps, I’m sure he’d have been at least a minute faster and he’d have beaten me. Bruce is just a monster on the bike and despite his small frame and the flat nature of this course, he can still compete with the best on just raw talent. This should have been a good course for me and I thought I was doing pretty well, but I have some improvement to do here. I just can’t seem to suffer like I used to.
The course started heading north and then west and this was really fast. I was going over 35 mph here. After the turn-around, I fought the grade and the headwind coming back, but was still doing about 19 mph. I caught my 30-second man after 16 minutes. I passed “Metro Eddie” after 28 minutes and he started 15+ minutes in front of me. Passing him didn’t count. I never caught my 1-minute man, but I’m pretty sure I got close than one minute to him.
At 33 minutes, after I had started the second (different road) out-and-back, I passed a third rider. I was doing 38 mph when I passed him. That’s fun. That feels like a real time trial. At the last turn-around, I measured my 1-minute man at 45 seconds ahead of me. I measured the DR HORTON rider who started 90 seconds in front of me as well. He was at least a minute faster than me already, 2.5 minutes in front of me on the road. This guy ended up 4th overall, 2m40s faster than me, so he was probably about two minutes ahead of me at this point. I also noticed that Bruce, who started four minutes behind me, had made up about a minute on me.
I tried to work hard on the difficult final 15 minutes, into the wind and up the rollers. Just after the second (and final) turn-around, I passed my 4th rider. This would have been more satisfying if he wasn’t stopped, taking a piss. In a 1-hour TT, he stops to pee? Less than 15 minutes from the finish?
I finally got my heart rate to hit 170 bpm on the final hill, where I passed my 5th rider, an ICCC guy who finished in 42nd place. My finally time was 58:20, for an average speed of 24.3 mph. The winner of our division rode a remarkable 53:30. That’s just sick. I was nearly five minutes behind him. No one was within a minute of this guy and only two were within two minutes of him. Bruce rode 56:53 and John rode 59:04.
My heart rate average was just 164 bpm. This might be partial to just not being able to suffer as much now, getting older, and maybe just not enough experience on the bike to keep the heart rate high on the flatter terrain. I used to be able to hold 175 bpm for an hour.
