After not having raced in quite a while, I ended up scheduling two consecutive weeks of time trials, although apart from being time trials, the two races couldn't be more different. I was really targeting the second race as my "A" race, but the first one is a local one where some bragging rights are on the line...
Highway to Heaven TT
The first of the two races was a short local hill climb time trial up the steepest local hill in the area. The race is only about a mile long and should take under 5 minutes, but is absolutely no joke. If done at full effort, it should hurt as bad as any long race. My story for this race is fairly short and not particularly satisfying. I decided to do the race on my TT bike since I had to have that all setup for the second TT and my TT bike is about the same weight as my road bike. This was pretty unusual; almost every one does this race on a road bike. On this particular day, this choice was probably a bad one. Overnight, there had been a bit of rain and the course was still pretty wet in spots. I quickly found out that traction was going to be a big problem as my back wheel spun out like crazy on the first steep pitch when I tried to stand and hammer. I think this was probably a bit of a problem for everyone, but on my TT bike the weight is shifted forward of where it would be on a road bike, making my traction issues really bad. I ended up placing a disappointing 5th in my category (Cat 5) with a time of 4:27 and was beaten by a large margin by a local Strava friend. I wasn't even able to get a best personal time, which was also disappointing. It was still a fun little race and will definitely give me some motivation for next year!
Interlude: Beach Riding Snafus
In between my two races, we had a week planned at Rehoboth on the eastern shore of Maryland. It was a very relaxing fun vacation, with some good terrain for practicing for the flat 40K TT I had coming up at the end of the week. It turned out to be quite the eventful week on my bike. On my first ride of the week, I was about 20 minutes in to the ride when I heard the sound no cyclist likes to hear. I got my first flat ever on tubular tires. I was also embarrassingly unprepared; apart from my cell phone, I had no flat kit or spare. I called home and was told I was walking (the kids were napping). After walking a bit, I bit the bullet and decided to try out riding the flat tire; one minor advantage of tubular over clincher is you can ride it flat. Fortunately, I was riding my "training" race wheel, my rear Hed 3 and had brought a disc to the beach as well. I did end up gluing on a new tire over the course of a few nights at the beach house, which is quite the fun ordeal. On my second ride at the beach, my power meter stopped registering mid ride. After replacing the battery in the unit, I realized when it still didn't work that the little magnet near the bottom bracket had fallen off (after more than a year). I was again fortunate that I had the spare gear necessary to make the fix, an extra battery and some of the tubular tire glue fixed me right up.
Church Creek TT
My second of the two races was a 40K TT at Church Creek, MD. This race overlaps somewhat with the Eagleman course and is similarly flat, but can be challenging due to the winds. For this race, I had my family along (we stopped at the race on the way back from the beach), so I had some nice photo documentarians helping out.
Here's me at the school where we registered.
We then had to go about 5 miles from the registration to the race start. My wife took these shots while driving next to me (and scaring me that she was going to drive into head on traffic with my four kids).
Here I am waiting near the start line with the kids (and prizes from boardwalk games at the beach):
Goals
Going in to the race, I had some vague goals. From my power testing, I think my FTP is 260+ watts, so I was hoping to average 260+. I also was hoping I might be in the ballpark of 57 minutes. Neither of those things happened. My power meter says I averaged 237 watts and I finished in ~58:30. On the other hand, I felt appropriately sore afterward and felt like I gave my best effort that day, so I am not upset with the result. Based on my heart rate average, I don't think I could have given much more, so maybe my power meter was reading low (I didn't zero it or calibrate it that morning; just forgot).
On Your Left
In my spring TT, I was one of the first to start and ran out of targets to try to pass, which made the motivation in the last half of the race hard. In contrast, for this race I was one of the last to start and had plenty of opportunity to pass other riders. At the starting gate, the starter commented something like, "good luck catching that guy" since I had a minute man instead of 30 second man (there were a few no shows that thinned the group of riders who started right ahead of me). I dead panned that I'd see him shortly. Five minutes later I had my first pass. Roughly another five minutes and I caught the next guy. That's how it went for the first half of the race; a pass every few minutes to help keep the motivation going. Toward the end, it got a bit more bunched up and I could see my next target immediately after passing the previous one. Maybe its juvenile of me, but I still find that nothing is more fun than passing people.
Darn Rumble Strips
On the car ride to the race, I pointed out to my wife how many of these roads have these annoying rumble strips on the shoulder right where a cyclist would normally want to ride. I told her how they come and go and can really surprise you and shake you like crazy on your bike. Turns out this was ironically prescient. About 5 miles from the finish, after there hadn't been rumble strips since the first couple miles, I got surprised by a rumble strip (head was probably down looking at the bike computer). I barely managed to save myself from crashing, with my elbows getting knocked out of the aero bars and my chest hitting the bars. On the download from my bike computer, you can see a bump where my speed falls and my heart rate skyrockets. That was the rumble strip!Gotta Go
I was very grateful to my wife and kids for letting me do this race, so the last thing they needed was to stick around bored waiting to see the results of my race. I met them right after the finish, packed up my gear, dropped off my race timing chip and headed out. So at this point, I have no idea how I placed in my category. I assume I'll find out at some point. There is a chance I won, but it depends quite a lot on who else showed up; there are plenty of folks in the area who have done faster times as a Cat 5 than I did.
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