Ride Report: 2013 WA State Individual TT Championships

So, hey, time flies when you hang the bike up and dive into the pillowy embrace of a couch. It has apparently been almost a month since I actually rode the WA State ITT Championships.

My year of firsts continued, as I can say that this race will go down as the first time I ever came away from a race undeniably disappointed in my performance.

Pin to Win

There are only 3 real time trials in this part of Washington: Frostbite, Icebreaker, and WATT. As the names suggest, the first two take place in February and March, are cold and wet, and generally weed out smarter people early in the year. Then there’s WATT, which had the misfortune of occurring the same weekend as one of the more popular crits, conveniently giving those smarter riders an out.

So that only really leaves the devotees, skinsuits and 10k rigs in hand, and a smattering of triathletes. One of whom I had the pleasure of parking next to.

And pinning numbers on.

“Mind helping me out,” I heard him ask as I neatly configured 8 pins through my rental number and onto my jersey.

Seemingly, I exude the aura of a master pinner, as this continued my streak of 3 seasons’ worth of TTs involving attaching numbers to my parking stall neighbor.

“Sure, no worries.”

There’s no better way to really get to know someone than reaching into their lower armpit, grabbing a bit of their skin-tight synthetic tank top, and skewering it 4 times. Except maybe stabbing them. Which, of course, I did.

“You know, I think you put it through my skin there, but I didn’t even feel it.”

Sometimes I just don’t know the extent of my own deft touch, I guess.

Start Last, Finish Last

Being the most enthusiastic of the 15 people in the combined Cat 4/5 race, I likely registered first, and therefore was given the opportunity to start last.

My fingers warmed up from pinning, I took to the start line after a few quick sprints around the park. I acquainted myself with the two riders immediately in front of me, 30s and 1:30 in front of me, since the 1min man didn’t apparently show up.

The nice thing about riding a TT is that you get instant feedback on how you are doing in the way of the rider ahead of you: Catch him, and you’re doing ok. Lose him, and you’re probably not.

I rolled up to the line, took a deep breath, watched my 30s man ride away in his carbon-black suit and matching Rudy Project helmet, and focused on my goal.

“59:59,” I thought. At least trying to break 1 hour over the 40km course.

3…2…1…

“Let’s go fishin’”

Recon Shmeecon

The course immediately goes up a small rise and to the right, before turning back gradually left to a long, downhill railway grade. I kicked up the hill, stomped down one gear, and got into aero form.

This was the race der Dunkelblitzenpanzerfunf was built for. My Williams disk throbbing away, I pounded over the rise, and started down the short grade.

And immediately realized all my earlier recon was for naught.

I had come down to ride the course twice in June, and found an old, rutted chipseal road with ample smooth gouges. Not the fastest surface, but easy enough to find smooth and fast pavement under the oiled gravel. That had since been replaced and was now fresh and loose, with no smooth ruts. My tires rattled and skittered along, bouncing over the surface that was almost more suited for a CX race than a TT.

Bouncing along, I searched the road ahead for my 30s man. He was there, inside of 30s ahead of me, coming into the 90 degree left intersection at Skookumchuck Rd.

Brake. Find the apex. Kick out.

I slid back into aero position, buffeted by the tailwind. Came over a small rolling hill, and never saw my 30s man again.

Enduro MTB

I powered on, realizing I probably wasn’t setting the world on fire. Every so often, I caught a small glimpse of my 30s as we wound alongside the river, hopped over the two bridges, and made the only other left onto Johnson Creek.

The road turns upward for roughly 7km here, first gradually, then two big kickers before the race turnaround.

With the tail-crosswind the first half felt a lot easier than during my recon. The small upticks could easily be powered over without changing gears, and I felt generally good.

The second half kickers both required a trip to my 39 ring for a short sprint.

“Just push, 59:59.”

I saw our entire field descending on the way up, realized how far off the pace I likely was, botched the turnaround requiring an un-clipping, and started back down.

I had wondered why everyone seemed to be cautiously approaching the descent, but with the headwind funnelling up the little creek valley and the road surface, it was both hard to get up to full speed and extremely sketchy to corner when I did. Both tires wailed and gnashed, protesting every degree of lean.

About halfway down, I finally got passed. I’m not sure if they were the leaders of the Cat 3 race, or late entrants into our race, but it happened twice as I hit the bottom of the road and turned right back on Skookumchuck.

38kmh

Back on the flat road, with a light tailwind, I tried to settle back into a rhythm. I did, but at this point I knew I wasn’t going to break 1 hour. If I pushed myself well into the red, I could eek out 41kmh for a few hundred meters before needing to recover. Eventually, those bursts got fewer and further between. I could settle around 38kmh with the tailwind’s assistance.

So I did.

I cruised in at around that pace, saw the finish line, kicked, and finished in 1:04. I hung my head a bit, and rode back to the park.

As it turns out, my neighbor was our eventual race winner, at a time around 54min.

No doubt thanks to my excellent pinning job.

der Dunkelblitzenpanzerfunf

I felt like I needed another bike.

There was an entire 4-5′ section of my computer-room-bike-garage-home-office-overflow-storage wall that wasn’t already adorned with paraphernalia from one of those necessary purposes. It was a perfect hole for a third bike to lean against.

Filling that hole was my working justification for getting a new toy. Some mid-life-crisians might have tried to fit a Ferrari there, a Harley, or a new blonde, but none of those are really my particular brand of waning virility.

I needed something darker. More aggressive. Something…Taiwanese.

Enter der Dunkelblitzenpanzerfunf, because any time you need an outlandish name for an outlandish item, there’s compound German nouns. At first, I was going to try to piece together some sort of nonsensical Chinese characters, but I figure this bike deserves better than being reduced to a tramp stamp.

Since this was a once-in-a-delusional-moment-of-weakness purchase, I went ahead and gave it some love courtesy of VISA (mostly), Williams Cycling, Rotor and Speedplay. One good aero fitting later, and the Dark Lightning Tank 5 (or Dark Lightning Panther for WW2 buffs) was christened.

It’s done a noble job filling the hole.

Much like its owner, the P5 is a big, stubborn bike. It goes where it wants, with my suggestions being just that. It wants to go straight, and fast. It wants to make the rear disk roar over every imperfection in the asphalt. I don’t know if it will ever see the little ring outside of tuning and cleaning the chain.

In many ways, this bike is me, in carbon.

I’m not going to shamelessly plug the Cervelo P5, nor am I going to give it a review, because that’s not really what I do and I’m not a time-tested expert in bike technology. Also, the specs and testing are nicely outlined in this whitepaper, which is a pretty cool read for someone who likes numbers.

But what I will say is that instantly I noticed a different look from fellow roadies when I donned the pointy golf ball, and climbed atop something that looks to have been ordered from the Tron design catalog.

It’s a look of respect. A look of intimidation. A look that says, “Shouldn’t you be going faster than that?”

And therein lies the rub.

I’ve still gotta ride it. It’s not a Ferrari or a Harley. It’s still just a bike, and therefore limited by my engine, not me by it. In filling one hole, I’ve created another one. One more reason to obsess over trying to get better, ride harder, and faster. One more saddle to break in.

But there’s the crazy part.

It all combines to make one twisted and awesome experience. I’ve loved every minute I’ve ridden the P5. I loved swapping out the brake pads to fit the carbon tubulars (although hiding them under the rear frame presents some practical challenges). I loved reading the Magura RT6 hydraulic brake manual. I love when the rear disk goes silent, and I realize I’m not pushing it hard enough.

I just love this bike.

Ride Report: 2013 Frostbite Time Trial

While most of the cycling world was focused on Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, I was out humping around the inaugural race of the 2013 PNW cycling season: The Footworks Cycles Frostbite Time Trial. Its only slightly less known, maybe a little less classic, and eminently more pronouncable than that Belgian race.

In an effort to defend my throne as “Not-the-Worst-Time-Trialist-in-WA”, I clipped on the aero bars and headed to Carnation for 20km of unpredictable Seattle-area February weather. Amazingly, the rain and wind never materialized, leaving only a super-fast, mild temperature, dry road blast through many of the same farm roads used in last year’s Tour de Peaks . Luckily, without the aromatic wall of sun-baked cow shit around every corner.

Jumping ahead a little bit, I managed to retain my title and it didn’t even come down to the 19 people who DNS/DNF’d.

A Few of My Unfavoritest Things

It may, however, have possibly involved the handful of people in my division that couldn’t seem to make it to the tent in time for their start. Seemingly, what should have been the simplest part of the day was turned into a carbon-spandex maelstrom of epic proportions. The police holding traffic were powerless to stop the seemingly endless tide of riders coming in 3-5min late and trying to start off-timer.

If I was already spending 10k on aero kit, I’d probably go ahead and buy a functioning watch to go with it, or watch the giant digital clock between the start tent and the parking lot, or listen for the starter calling everyone’s sequential numbers on the bullhorn.

Or…maybe I wouldn’t. I mean, even with that 3-5min cushion, I still wasn’t competitive on the day, but I’m sure someone benefited from it.

Of course, that buffer seems less important when a rider can just jump in the paceline that came screaming around me like it had a JATO strapped on after making the turn at 10km. Welcome to the Wild Wild West of Cat4/5 Individual Time Trials.

Still, I Didn’t Ride Baaa aaa aaa aaadly

Riding in rural Washington, while apparently carrying a low chance of running into a meth lab, usually results in quite a number of jackasses, spitters, and other assorted hecklers lining the course.

For this ride, the peanut gallery spared us from the jackasses, but did include two cows, three llamas, and a small herd of goats.

Its a weird kind of zen. Can never tell if they are trying to comprehend what I am, and what I’m doing, or if my bike just looks delicious.

And what did we learn?

Bike racing is a gateway drug to more bike racing. It doesn’t matter how far people bend the rules, how far from competitive the result, its something that is either in your veins or it isn’t.

Much like a bag of Lays (or in my case, fucking Girl Scout cookies), you can’t just have one and then leave it alone. I didn’t even intend to race this year, then I bought my license. Then I decided to just do a tuneup at Frostbite. Now I’m scheduled in for 5 more races in 2013.

It doesn’t even matter how badly I flail around pretending to be a racer, because I’m only really there to race myself.

Against the Clock

By virtue of the fact that I’ve never actually finished a sanctioned road race, I would refer to myself as a time trial specialist.

I train alone, I live inside my own head when I ride, I spend an inordinate amount of time being dropped and having to catch up to group rides, and I’m that asshole who gets a little skitchy going downhill in the pack (usually making friends with the center line in the process). My road race style is a little like David Moncoutié, if he had never been in a breakaway.

Imagine my surprise to also find out that I’m not the worst USAC-ranked Time Trialist in the country, nor even the state. Somehow I’ve acheived all of this without a pointy helmet or disc wheels. I only purchased my clip-on bars, aka ‘The Couch’, as a way to take pressure off my wrists/hips on centuries. I don’t even have them tuned to a mathematically-precise configuration tested for hours in the wind tunnel. I think I also may have had my numbers loosely pinned.

All of this flies in the face of TT Tactics 103. Which is an eerily timed and appropriate conversation as I was finishing this post.

Maybe I can chalk it all up to having too much illegal tilt on my saddle, coupled with the reduced drag from my socks being outside regulation length and the non-structural aero fairing provided by my facial hair. That’s just the UCI infractions I’m flaunting, not even going to start a tally on breaking The Rules in the last two-and-a-half paragraphs.

But really, for someone like me at the ass-end of the talent pool, teetering between racer and rec cyclist, the only four rules that really matter in a TT are: Get on bike, Ride until heart explodes, Record time, Do better next year.