My race day was less than perfect but not in the same league of sorryness as JT. The new bike was in the shop at RC all week for the 30-day and to look at a couple of shifting issues from BB#1. I picked it up on Friday afternoon which meant that there was not really chance to test ride ahead of the TT today. Hopefully all was OK.
There were lots of small mistakes that together impacted my race that made it my worst TT outing ever. First , on the drive down I missed the turn off 99W and drove an extra 5 miles south (and back). This cut into my warm-up time. I arrived at about 9.35 for a 10.15 kick-off. Then the bike had to be set up for aero bars which took a little longer than expected. Then there was the emergency bathroom visit to the retirement home chapel to take care of a gurguling stomach, wasting precious minutes. Then there was the change into Hammer race clothes since I was too late to hunt down JT for the new kit. Thankfully, the number was on the correct side. By the time the trainer was inconvenienced it was 9.57. Two minutes later, the warm-up was done and it was off to the start. I had enough time to stretch the legs up and back along the road before I was called to the start. I was screwed even before I started. All rushed and no warm-up to speak of. Andrew Hayes was the started behind me. I regularly beat him all CCX season but he is a kick-arse TTer and did 33 to my 37 mins at Jack Frost. I was convinced that I had a genuine chance of finishing last.
Ok, now to the race. The first two miles were hell. The road quickly turned upwards with a reasonably steep climb. WTF????? The HR max out about halfway up and then I just hung on for grim life, waiting for Andrew-frigging-Hayes to swoosh past me. At the top of the hill (nay, mountain!!) the road descend and round a tight RHer. The HR while still high was coming down towards 90%. Then about 3 miles in there was a LH turn with the option of going straight ahead. WT-friggin-F????. No flagger or indication of which was the path of Truth or the path of despair. I chose to stay straight but glanced away to the left as I passed through the intersection looking for riders. OF COURSE there were riders there, I had picked the wrong door - no prize for Fitzgerald, thanks for playing.......Lost about 20s in the turnaround. My anger at going off-course was dulled by the pains in my legs and I soldiered on. The next few miles were a series of smallish rollers. I found myself picking myself out of the aero bars way too much and using the drops for leverage to power over the rollers. There was alot of gear changing too. Like an engineer in a hip-hop club, rhythm was non-existent.
Then it was the turn around. Gave myself a mental pack on the back that Andrew hadn't caught me. But he was not too far behind and passed by about a mile after the turnaround - I yelled something vaguely encouraging at him as he went by. He was having a blinder of a race, although I found out later that he too missed the same LH turn that I did. Now with about 5 miles to go I tried to focus on reining in the HR and making smooth pedal strokes in the right gear. The rollers made it very difficult to do this and there were period where there was no pedaling - just conserving energy for the next roller. About 2 miles from the end saw JT forlornly walking his bike back. I finished 33.25, good enough for in 7th place in the Cat 4/5 race. Bit surprised that I beat so many others as I had a frustratingly crappy race.
There were so many areas to improve: better overall preparation, arrive much earlier, actually do a warm-up, better pacing with few red zone spikes, better concentration with pedal stroke, stay on-course. Will definitely ride faster in the new kit as well :).
My goal is to beat today's time by 1 minute next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment