Steel City Endurance Racing

Masters Nationals Time Trial

Louisville, KY

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

It’s been a solid year for time trials this year.  Consistent, solid, good results, good practices.  So I was looking forward to the opening race.  Although I hoped for a podium, there is no guarantee that a solid performance will translate into a solid result.  It’s bike racing.  In 2009 on the same course I turned what I thought would be a top 5^th placing only to finish closer to 10^th.  I still remember looking at the results with Maryanne Holt, one of us tracing our finger down, down, further down the results until we found our names.  She won the time trial at Seven Springs, I had gotten 4^th in 2008.  Yet here we both were – nowhere near the podium.  “Well, that’s discouraging,” she said.  So it was, with her voice echoing a bit in my head, that I prepared for Tuesday.

I know most of the women in my group – Anne Marie Miller, Betty Tyrell, Margaret Thompson – and know that they consistently turn in faster times than I do,  which means that I would have to have a spectacularly good day and they would have to have a spectacularly bad day for me to be faster.  And frankly, if I did win the time trial because one of them punctured or lost a shoe or had cross winds or rain while I had sunshine and still weather – my result would always have an asterisk in my own mind.  They are simply faster than me.  So I figured a 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th place spot was reasonable.

We had an early start time – not my favorite, being so not a morning person, but better than an afternoon start with a forecast of hot and humid.  The course was out and back – two lanes of highway set aside for us, fully exposed to sun and wind, with a big climb right out of the gate.  I had ridden the course on Monday and decided that the opening climb was long and steep enough to merit the small ring.  It also meant the final mile was one long fast downhill, so I could also tell myself that the race was really 11 miles, not 12.4.

The time trial is all about ritual and I have the ritual down.  Get to the venue, ride to the start to check the ‘official’ time, find the start house, confirm the finish, and gauge how far I am from the start.  Then get the bike ready, get me ready, get the bike checked, get the helmet checked, clomp into the start house, start my watch at my one minute woman, get settled and clipped, breath in/breath out, and when the final 5 seconds have beeped down, GO !!!

I had hoped to have a rabbit, but the woman who started ahead of me, the eventual winner, was never in my sights.  But rabbit or no rabbit, the race is executed the same: pedal smoothly in the hardest gear you can; count to one hundred, over and over; don’t look back; don’t panic if someone passes you; don’t think.  And so it went: I got to the 11 mile mark, crested the rise, and went as fast as I could in my biggest gear making myself as flat and small as I could.  I crossed the line at :32:46, good for 5^th.  I was a bit surprised by that time – I had thought I might be closer to :31:46, but I can’t think of where I could make up a whole minute.  It was still a satisfying ride – and I was happy to be on the podium.  A great start to the week!

Photos courtesy of Craig W. Dooley at Kentucky Backroads Photography.