Wow, I’ve been busy lately. My training has been much more segmented than usual, but I don’t feel that I’ve lost too much ground. I’m not really building either, though, so that’s a little frustrating. My work schedule has been the main culprit, leaving me somewhat exhausted as well as throwing off my routine. I’m big on routines, so little shifts can throw off most of the day.
Either way, I did have a pretty fun solid day of training on Saturday with some of the team members of Queen City Wheels. They’re a local Cincy cycling club that hosts a variety of events, especially time trials, which always appeal to triathletes like myself. This year, they started a 40k time trial series in Northern KY, hosting one per month. It’s actually only a 23.4 mile race, but close enough to call it a 40k series I guess. This past weekend was the third of five time trials, but the first I was able to attend. Here’s the “race” report:
I got a little lost on the way to the course, so I didn’t get the warmup I was hoping for. I only rode about 10 miles total before starting. The roads were damp in spots from overnight downpours, so that concerned me a little, but at least I was able to get comfortable with the surface conditions in my shortened warmup. We were seeded by past performance or in my case my predicted time. I was slated to start 28th of 34 riders (another 3 showed up late and were tagged on the end), although I think I was overrated by the race director. Since I didn’t get a chance to scout the course I had to rely on the descriptions given to me by the other riders. It sounded pretty basic, slightly rolling, but with a significant climb before the turnaround. This was a concern for me since I haven’t adjusted my front derailleur to the point where it doesn’t throw the chain occasionally when switching from small to big gear. I hoped my “big legs” would be able to mash their way up the hill in the big ring…wrong, but we’ll get there.
The race itself starts with a screaming downhill that turns into a steady flat to downhill…basically I was over 30mph for the first 2 miles, feeling very fast. Then the rolling began, and reality set in. I was still holding around 24-25mph steady through most of the next 7-8 miles with the exception of an up roll or a headwind. The wind was gusty, but kind of swirly and we were in lowlands, so it didn’t have a huge effect. I was rolling along much faster than anticipated, but I still got passed before the turnaround when we hit the hill. I made it about 2/3rds to the top before realizing I couldn’t crank through in the big ring. Then I made the rookie mistake of switching front rings while cranking uphill, and dropped my chain. I cursed as I fixed my mistake with less than 10 seconds lost.
The return trip to the finish started with another screaming downhill, the one we just climbed. It got my momentum up, which helped me recover some of my lost average speed from the climb. Once I lost that momentum though, I realized how tired my legs actually were. Luckily, I finally started seeing people I started behind, so I had rabbits to chase down. That basically carried me the rest of the way to the finish. When I turned and saw the timing car at the finish, I made a meager attempt at a sprint that basically was a lot of grunting with very little speed gain. As I crossed, I shouted my starting number so they knew what time I had, then I coasted to a little cooldown…I was spent.
The result: I finished pretty close to my seeding, and faster than expected, covering the 23.4 miles in 58:44. My avg speed was 23.9mph, by far the fastest piece I’ve completed. It was pretty exciting.
So now, I’m planning on hitting the QCW’s weekly 10.2 mile time trial tomorrow to use as part of a long training ride…then I have my first tri of the season on Sunday. It’s a C race sprint tri, but I’m looking forward to it as a fun event and to finally pull all three sports together for the first time since September of last year. I’ll be back later this week to recap tomorrow’s TT and discuss weekend race strategy. Until then…
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