Time Trial (n) – A gathering of men and women on expensive bicycles with funny shaped helmets.
This evening brought the final installment of this year’s Blue Streak Time Trial series at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The series takes place monthly, but scheduling conflicts have meant that I only made the July and October races. Given that I’m racing a time trial on a road bike, that’s not a huge loss to me, but I would have liked to try it a few more times. Oh well, there will be more next year!
Yours truly having a typically disorganized start.
I rode to the race from my house, arriving what I considered to be reasonably early: 40 minutes before the start. But my pragmatism was exceeded by the enthusiasm of the rest of the field, and I was preceded in registration by some 84 other riders! With one rider released from the start every 30 seconds, this meant I wouldn’t start until 6:42 pm, well over an hour from when I arrived and just a half hour before the sun would be fully down. So much for the ride down from the house being an effective warm-up!
As has happened to me before, the lengthy wait allowed me to lose focus. I meandered around the parking area, pedaling enough to keep my legs somewhat warm, and chatting with a couple friends. Katie showed up from CrossFit a few minutes before I was supposed to finally start, and I lollygagged with her for too long before heading to the start. I thought I would be okay, as the clock on my cycle computer showed me a couple minutes early, but it turned out that my clock was a couple minutes slower than the race’s clock.
I rolled up to the line just a few seconds before my scheduled departure time. I barely had time to get stopped and get my phone out before the marshal told me to go, so I sputtered away from the line, phone in hand. I got Strava started and my phone stowed in just a few dozen yards, but it was hardly the charging start I had hoped to duplicate from the last race.
The side effect of my distracted, disorganized start was that the rider ahead of me was well out of sight, and so I missed seeing where they took the first turn. My last attempt at the Blue Streak had come just after some torrential rain, and so the course had been altered to an out-and-back to avoid a flooded back section. This time we were running the traditional course, and I wasn’t sure where the first turn was, and there is an inexplicable lack of signage at this race.
I got to the intersection where I was pretty sure I was to turn right, and asked the Security Forces guy there which way the bike race went. He seemed surprised to see me for some reason, but finally nodded and pointed to the right, just as I caught sight of a rider far off up the road. I had nearly come to a stop, trying to get the cop’s attention, and now I stood and raged on the cranks, trying in vain to make up for my sloppy start.
A wave of anger and frustration crashed over me, and I pounded on the pedals and pulled at the bars as if everything that troubled me in this life was the bike’s fault. All I had wanted to do in this race was break a 21 mph average, which would beat my previous performance by a decent margin. In a time trial, that’s hardly fast, but at my size, and with my inexperience, and on an aluminum road bike (vs. a carbon time trial bike, which the majority of the field brought), it would be enough. The first three miles of the course are the fastest, due to a slight decline, and I had pretty much squandered them with my sloppy start.
The back part of the course rises slightly, and I was having a difficult time talking my legs into creating the 22 mph I wanted to see on the computer. It’s an interesting predicament for me, as a three-sport athlete. A ten mile TT on the road is roughly equivalent, in terms of effort, to a 5k run, and a bit easier than a 1-lap sprint on the mountain bike at John Bryan. At the same time, the efforts are completely different in how they feel. The 5k, for me, is all lungs, and the MTB sprint is equal parts lungs and legs. The TT is all legs, and my performance is a direct reflection of the available power in them (or lack thereof), my lactate threshold, and how well I manage my pacing. Trying to draw on my experience on foot and on dirt has proven to be less helpful than one might think.
Flashing past the finish. The photographer can’t be blamed for missing somebody this fast! (He says, tongue firmly planted in cheek.)
As I passed the halfway point, I was looking for something to pull me forward. Part of me just wanted this race to be over, for the misery to stop, so I could go home and sulk. I passed one rider, but was passed by two others, and the speed disparity between all of us was too great to be of much use psychologically. My speed was hovering in the 20s, but I was sure it wouldn’t be enough to get me over the 21 average I was looking for. I wasn’t even sure it was enough to beat my last performance.
The course turned south again, angling toward the finish in the final leg, and I mustered what I had left to try and sprint to the end, but it wasn’t much. I hammered the last half mile, coming across the line out of the saddle and out of breath, with at least the small satisfaction of putting in a full effort.
The results of this race continued the trend that seems to have run across my whole season: have problems, work hard, improve anyway. While I missed my target of 21 mph, I did improve my previous time by over a minute, finishing in 28:46 for an average of 20.86 mph. I’ll have unfinished business with this TT heading into next season, but that’s not all bad news. Having something to shoot for has always kept me training, and in the end, that’s the point of all of this.
