Yesterday morning I raced my first individual time trial (ITT) at the C-130 Hercules Time Trial in Dover, DE. An ITT is very similar to the bike leg of a triathlon, each rider goes off individually and races for their best time over a fixed course and drafting off of your competitors is not allowed. I raced as a Cat5 (the intro category of bike racing) and placed 2nd, missing the Cat5 win by 15 seconds. Cat5 can have quite a spread in abilities, especially in time trials. ITTs don't count for getting promoted to higher categories, so some cyclists who only like to time trial (to avoid crash heavy events for example) stay Cat5. Also, because of the similarity to triathlons, they sometimes attract strong triathletes who don't bike race much and thus are by default Cat5.
Bike Setup
The only new thing on my bike this year is a new disc wheel I bought used. In theory this should be a little bit faster than my previous race wheels. Here's what my ride looked like after a little pre-race wash down and tune up:
Race Morning Commute
When I signed up for the race, I saw that it was in DE and thought "that's about an hour away". A couple days before the race I looked up directions and realized the race was all the way on the eastern shore, more like two hours away. The race director sent out start times and I had an early start time at 9:03, so I decided I needed to leave at 6am or so. Fortunately, that early there isn't traffic over the Bay Bridge, so the drive went quite smoothly. I even followed another racer (obvious from the TT gear in his car) for 30 minutes or so till I needed to stop for gas.
Setup and Warmup
Not having raced like this before, I wasn't exactly sure what to bring and erred on the side of bringing just about all my worldly bike stuff in my little Audi TT. I was told that lots of people warmup on trainers (which was true), I brought my trainer and a training wheel just in case. I also had some minor concerns about the race number; I received some advice about how to put it on aerodynamically (spray glue + pins) that sounded a bit involved. In the end, everything proved to be simpler than I had originally thought. I put the wheels on my bike, pumped them up to pressure, taped over the valve hole cutouts and the bike was good to go. I sprayed my race number with the glue, let it dry and stuck it on my tri-suit while wearing it to ensure a nice flat fit. I then went to the bathroom, took off the tri-suit, added some pins from the inside to secure it (and because the rules say there must be pins). When I checked in, I had asked about warming up and was told that there was a nice stretch of road the opposite direction from the course. So after setting up everything I went and warmed up for about 15-20 minutes with a couple of short race effort intervals.
Race Strategy
An ITT isn't very exciting as a race. Unless you happen to start near one of your competitors and get passed or pass them, you don't have any idea how you are doing relative to the field till the end. The challenge is to give it your best effort and hope that is enough. Since we started in alphabetical order of last names, I started second of the Cat5s, behind a half dozen or so juniors, meaning that I would have almost no idea how I was doing relative to the field unless I was getting passed. In theory, with my power meter on the bike the best strategy is to stay at an even effort of my 1-hour max power. I'd been given the advice that you need to be careful not to go out too fast, since it is easy to feel good at the beginning and fade. Instead, I was advised to go a little easier at the beginning and try to crush the last 2 miles.
Race Course
I wish I had brought my camera to the race (pretty dumb for someone planning to blog about it afterward). This race starts at the Air Mobility Control museum at the Dover Air Force Base in a big airfield with a dozen or so huge planes. The time trial itself starts out of the back of a C-130. To give an idea of what that looks like, here is another racer who posted his picture. NOTE: THIS IS NOT ME!
The course itself consisted of about a quarter mile or so to exit the museum grounds and then an out and back along a pretty flat north-south stretch of Rt 9. The finish line was a little before the entrance to the museum on Rt 9, so the back leg was a bit shorter (something I didn't realize till the end).
The Race Itself (http://app.strava.com/rides/7923876)
We lined up outside the side entrance to the C-130 in the order we were scheduled to start. The plane held about 4-5 riders at a time queued up getting ready to start at 30 second intervals. Since I was one of the early starters, I was in the plane almost right away. The starter held my bike so I can start clipped in and warns me that the ramp is pretty steep and I'm off. After navigating the turns and a bus that almost backed into me, I got out onto Rt 9 and tried to establish a nice tempo, reminding myself to take it easy. I looked at my heart rate and saw I was at 180 bpm! I figured high 170s was probably sustainable and tried to settle down a bit. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I passed the guy who went off 30 seconds ahead about 3-4 minutes into the course, which was a little unexpected (I think he was on a road bike). I then passed another three or four guys on the outbound leg which was pretty motivating. Near the turnaround, I got an idea of how far ahead the riders ahead were and could see that all but one were way out of range. My goal for the back would be to catch that one guy. I took the turnaround a bit gingerly; I think I actually went around the far side of a cone that I didn't have to just to be sure I wasn't cutting the course. I think the wind was a fairly consistent 5-10 mph from the east, meaning it was a crosswind for pretty much the whole course. I remember thinking that I was going into a slight headwind on the out leg and hoping to get a helping wind on the way back. At the turnaround I quickly realized that if anything the opposite was true and the wind was hurting slightly more on the back leg. I did manage to catch the guy I was shooting to catch on the back leg; he was a junior on a road bike with clip-on aerobars and a road helmet going at a pretty impressive pace for that setup. I had been holding back a touch in order to be able to go all out with 2 miles to go as planned. A minor glitch in this plan was that I had assumed the back leg was the same length as the out leg, but it was actually about a half mile short, so I feel like I ended up with a little left in the tank. I was actually slightly confused at the finish; after passing the finish line I wasn't 100% sure I was really done and still kept going fairly hard returning to the museum parking lot.
Time: 48:30
Distance: 21 miles
Avg Speed: 25.8 mph
Avg Heart Rate: 177 bpm
Avg Power: 258 watts
Results: The Waiting Game
I knew from my bike computer that my time was about 48:30 and that would have placed reasonably well in some previous years, so I figured I should stick around to see how I had done. I put away my bike, packed up my other stuff and changed out of my bike clothes and was good to go by 10 am. I called home to make sure I didn't need to rush back and then hung out near the registration desk, periodically chatting with other riders who wandered by. A saw a number of other riders doing post race cool downs on their trainers, with one notable guy a couple cars away lamenting how sore he was. Eventually, the race organizers brought back the results for the juniors and "preliminary" results for the Cat 5 riders. Seeing that I had placed 2nd on the preliminary results, I figured I would wait to get my medal, but they wouldn't give those out till there were "final" results. I figured that wouldn't be too long. In the meantime, I found out the guy who beat me by 15 seconds was the sore guy. I wasn't sore at all. Hmm. It felt pretty hard while I was doing it, but maybe I didn't go hard enough. By 11:30, I decided I needed to just bail and drove home. Maybe they will send me the medal if I send them postage.
05/07/2012 Edit: Official Results
The official results were posted after I wrote this entry originally:
https://www.usacycling.org/results/?year=2012&id=982&info_id=47693
Looking at the overall results, my time was about 28th best of of ~150 racers when you include all categories. Somehow that doesn't sound quite as good as "2nd". Also, those results don't yet seem to include the Cat1/2 guys who I would assume all beat me, so my real overall place is probably a bit lower.
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