i love the smell of lactic in the morning

"Race" Report: Withrow Time Trial (Bike Club TT Challenge), May 13, 2006


Well, after all my whining about it the day of the time trial finally came. Sascha picked me up at 6:45 and we went to pick Gilby up, then headed in the general direction of the race. Sascha was going by memory rather than having the directions written down, though, so we ended up going out there on 94 rather than 36 and of course we got lost, and by the time we arrived all our planned warm-up time was gone.

Starting a time trial without warming up is not a good idea, in case anyone was unclear on that point. Warming up is good. I started without any warmup at all besides the quarter-mile between the parking lot and the start line, and within two minutes of starting, I had a side stitch, a shoulder cramp, and cramps in both quads. I slowed down for several minutes to try and uncramp. By the time I was feeling better I don't know how much time I had lost. Ugh.

It turns out that time trials suck exactly as much as I thought they would. The only motivation I had was to chase my thirty-second person, which was my teammate Gilby, but her body apparently handled the lack of warmup a lot better than mine did because she disappeared up the road and I never saw her again. I caught and passed two other riders though. And no one caught me, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until I thought about it and remembered that nobody had been in line behind me at the start.

When everyone was done we waited around for the results. Gilby won! When Paula showed up with the results, Gilby was in the middle of telling us how she had gotten confused about the finish line and thought she was done before she actually was, but despite not even pedaling for the last few hundred yards she squeezed out the win by three seconds. Karla came in second with her own tale of woe -- she had flatted halfway through, but after standing around for a bit her very own Super Domestique rode up behind her and said "Here! Take my bike!" Karla rode the rest of the TT on a bike that didn't fit with pedals she couldn't clip into and still finished second, and I guess if you can pull that off you deserve to keep the yellow MWCMR jersey. I hate to apply the word "rockstar" to anyone other than my own teammates, but....

I was fourth, and the prizes went 5 deep, so that was pretty cool. Whoopee, another water bottle, right? Not quite. I don't know how the race promoters weaseled their way into this deal, but NOW Sports donated the prizes, and for my lousy fourth place I got a spanky new pair of Shimano 151 shoes! Gilby made out even better with a pair of Dura-Ace wheels. Talk about your schweet schwag! I'm going to try and get over to NOW to pick them up this afternoon, so I hope they fit. But new shoes are probably worth dragging my sorry ass out of bed for. Even if I have to do a time trial.

Then I went home and rode for another three hours with Nate and one of his cat 4 teammates (in the rain), and I was very sleepy that evening when we met up at a bar with a bunch of folks from Velo Bella as well as our own teammates, and a one lonely representative of Peace Coffee and one from Flanders (and Andy, who made a fine showing on behalf of Nature Valley by appearing to be asleep the entire time).

Here is a picture of Gilby on her way to the win. Check out how fast she looks! Now, scroll back up and look at the picture of me, in which I do not look very fast at all. I gotta get me some of them there aero bars.