Race Report - RASC Intermediate Time Trial 8/7/2007
"Fifteen seconds... ... Five! Four! Three! Two! One! You're off!..." And with that I was sent almost immediatly into my anerobic limit. My heart was pounding, my breatining was short gasps, my fingers were tingling, and my legs were pumping a gear that may have been a little too hard. Luckily the start sets you downhill before you get to a couple of little rollers.
The RASC Time Trial series has been held every year for about as long as I've lived here in Rochester. All that time (10 years) and this is the first time I'm doing them. This year there's three courses, a long (approx. 25 miles), intermediate (20 mile), and short (14 mile). The terrain is typical of Rochester, so it's gently rolling to rolling hills. Some years RASC organizers include a hill climb up Genoa, but decided to leave it out this year. Each course is run twice and they will award the three fastest riders in each catagory (Stock or Aero) for riders riding at least once on each course. This gives you two chances to get your best time to use in the competition, or as in my case, allows you to miss a single course and still compete in the series.
Going into this, I'm just trying to figure out where I'm at physically and know how I measure up to the fast riders in town. Being an ex-racerboy, I want to be able to dice it out with the fast guys. But, with the exception of Oxbow last year, and the local alleycat, I havn't raced in ten years. I have ridden semi-seriously off and on over the years, but only recently made any real attempt at training again.
The hardest part in doing a time trial is overcoming the urge to give up and the urge to go too hard. Going down the next roller which is a sweeping right before going flat, sweeping left and straight into Salem Corners, I'm still at my anerobic threashold and have to pull back some.
I concentrate on my breathing, delibrately forcing deep breaths in and out. Occasionally when that prooved to difficult I would then either take multiple short breaths in and forcefully exhale everything out, or forcefully inhale as much as I could and exhale in short multiple bursts. If you've ever taken a lamaze class, you'll recognize these as the types of breathing exercises they recomend for birthing mothers. (Clensing breath. Hee-hee hoooooo. Hee-hee hooooo.)
I set a pretty high (just about unrealistic for me) goal of completeing the course in 46 minutes averaging 25 miles per hour. Why would I set an unrealistic goal for myself, setting myself up for failure? If i didn't I don't think I could have pushed myself as hard as I did. It would have been too easy to ease up and say "why the heck am I gonna kill myself for a club race? I'll just go a little easier."
I should have labeled my bottles better, as I ended up taking my recovery (after race) bottle of Cytomax which has a higher concentration of Cytomax to water. During a race it ends up seeming to be too thick and sweet, making it difficult to keep sipping to keep hydrated.
Coming up "the" hill on the backside of the course was the hardest part. Knowing that I was about halfway through I tried to just set a good pace climbing seated. I wanted to keep some energy and strength for the top section, but needed to still keep the pace high.
I ended up realizing as I'm pushing along the last flat before the rise up to the finish that I could've pushed a little harder on the backside and top, at this point I'm going just about, but not quite, as fast as I can. I start that last rise and my 30 second man passes me, I let him go knowing that I've already given him 30 seconds and preventing him from coming round wouldn't prevent that.
Crossing the line, I attempt to hit the button on my cyclocomputer to stop the clock and continue pedaling down the hill to recover a little. As I toodle back to the start finish area, I notice my computer is still going. Crap! I must not have hit the button correctly. It's ok though, since my 30 second man and I crossed about a wheels length apart I'll just add 30 seconds to his time.
I ended up clocking in at 52:41 giving me an average speed of 22.1 MPH. Nowhere near my goal of 46/25. But at least now I have an idea of where I'm at.
UPDATE: Look's like I got fourth fastest in stock catagory. The list of results are located here.The fastest guy was as fast as some of the aero freaks.
I'd really encourage anyone to come out next Tuesday to do the short course time trial. Then the it goes back to the long, intermediate and short. Go here for more info. I'll post a map of next weeks course later.
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Wednesday 08/08/2007 | 12:34 pm
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