Two Wheel Blogs

OK I think I mentioned this before, but just in case it didn't come through... It was a really hot and really windy day for a timetrial yesterday. At race time we were looking at something like 90°F and 10mph winds. On a flat strip of asphalt 20 km long with no shade it felt a lot like riding in a convection oven.

I probably should have realized I was headed for cooling problems the minute I started my warm up. The sweat started pouring just from climbing on my bike. In a matter of minutes I was reaching for a big towel to mop it all up. Despite the river of flowing sweat, I felt pretty good at the warm up. Wattage looked good and my legs felt fresh.

The fresh legs and decent wattages continued well into the start of the race. In the first several minutes I had to keep dialing it back so as not to go out too hard. After the first five minutes or so, every time I sneaked a peek at my powermeter it told me I was on track for a good run.

Unfortunately the good feelings and rosey powermeter readings only lasted about 20 minutes or so. Somewhere around the 15 km mark the wheels started to come off - not a good thing to happen with 25 km to go. I dialed it back a bit and pushed on.

A few minutes later I'm at the turnaround. The trouble is, I couldn't quite get to the turnaround point. I came up on the back end of a line of 8-10 Corvettes. I guess they were the local Corvette owners' club out for a Sunday morning drive. For some reason they decided to stop and have a chat with the USACycling official at the turnaround. Now what do I do?

I made a snap decision, the product of an oxygen-starved brain being carried by a body which was suffering greatly. As a result I got myself good and yelled at by the USACycling official (Yes, he was right to do so.). To the good, however, I didn't get doored. OK, you get the picture.

End result: I spent about 30 seconds negotiating parked cars, the offical and eventually the turnaround. I've never really liked Corvettes.

Getting yelled at by an official had its own lasting effect too. It bounced me off the pain management curve. You know that curve? It's that internally calibrated curve you get on that tells you how much pain to take on given the distance yet to be covered. Worse, the distance yet to be covered was the entire route back to the finish, 20 km into a headwind.

That's pretty much where the race became a march straight to hell. Post race analysis shows I'd already overcooked the outbound segment. I'd lost my pain management setpoint. The topper was that I was dehydrating quickly.

The shortest way out of this mess was straight back to the finish line. There was nothing I could do put my head down and turn the crank. My form went to hell and my legs screamed in pain. That's a bad combination, weaker power output combined with a less aerodynamic position is a double hit in a time trial.

Indeed the return leg took me nearly 10 minutes longer than the outbound leg. Power dropped nearly 30 W after the turn. By the time I crossed the finish line I was pretty well cooked. Somehow the time I recorded was good enough for 3rd place on the day.

But that was just the first of two races yesterday. Yes, I did another 40 km TT. This time as stoker to Andy Coggan, as captain. There just isn't much I can say about this second race that comes close to doing it justice. Think of the searing pain you get at the top of a hard climb, at the end of a really hard attack, as you're just about to bridge but can't quite close. That's where I was within 5 minutes of the start. It grew much worse from there.

By the finish I had nothing but pain left in my legs. Much of my focus was on not falling off the bike. I doubt I was making over 200 W, probably less. The only thing that kept me going at all was not letting Andy down. I only hoped the time we (we?!) did was enough. As it turned out, even with my nearly dead weight on the back, Andy pulled us to a winning finish. It was his second championship jersey on the day, and his third this month. Strong doesn't begin to describe the way this guy rides.

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