State Championships - Time Trial

The Noise.

Imagine your neighbor turns on his vacuum cleaner. Then turns on his garbage disposal.

Then feeds the vacuum cleaner into the disposal.

It's in *his* house, of course, so it's not the loudest noise in the world. But you can definitely tell that something isn't quite right at the Jones's.


...waahhoowaahhoowaahhoowaahhoowaahhoowaahhoowaahhoowaahhoo...


That's the best analogy I can come up with to describe it, the noise of a deep-rim Zipp wheel coming up behind you. You see, like many other aerodynamic designs - you're probably familiar with golf balls, but many other designs use it - Zipp uses dimples.

Dimples that rip the air apart, inducing turbulence. Like many things in fluid flow, it's quite counter intuitive - you don't want to have smooth flow to minimize drag; smoothly flowing around an object creates a huge hole in the air behind the object. The random flow fluctuations inherent in turbulent flow, on the other hand, closely follow the contours of the object and leave only a tiny wake.







But ripping through the air, rather than gliding through it, has the side effect of a lovely noise signaling your presence to those ahead of you.

A vacuum cleaner being eaten by a garbage disposal.




It's not very common to see these rims at my level in Michigan during mass-start races; when there's someone pushing the air out of the way in front of you, it doesn't make that big of a difference. But today wasn't a mass-start race. It was a Time Trial. Time trials are different. Time trials don't allow drafting. Time trials are about aerodynamics, sustained power, and blinding levels of lactic acid.



Time trials are my event.



You see, instead of drafting together synergistically, competitors start individually. Without drafting, being able to sustain high power levels for an hour is critical. I'm no sprinter, I can't produce ultra-high-levels of power. But, genetically speaking, you either have fast twitch muscles - that produce insane levels of power, but are terribly inefficient - or you have slow-twitch muscles, which can endure sustained power for hours on end.

Judging by my sprint speed, I must've won some kind of slow-twitch muscle genetic lottery.


Time trials are my event.


Every rider has a predetermined start time; every minute another rider goes off like a shot. It's important to minimize time at low speed; everyone accelerates away from the gate as fast as possible.

It's an intoxicating feeling, watching them accelerate away from you, waiting for your start time. From previous events, I'm well aware of what to expect: three minutes to go; a rider explodes away. Two minutes to go; another. The adrenaline really starts to build; you can feel it tingling in your neck. A minute, the final rabbit - the first person I need to pass - will take off like a shot.


And then I will hunt him down.



I speak with experience when I say that it is hard to stay focused while being passed in a Time Trial. This, of course, brings us back to the noise.



When you're getting passed by someone with these dimpled rims, you can gradually here them coming up behind you. waahhoowaahoooWAAHOOO... To modify a phrase: being passed like that is like a baseball bat to the stomach. It's not very subtle; and more than slightly demoralizing.


When I first started racing, a little over a year ago, I wasn't very good at criteriums and road races. OK, I'm still not. But even from the beginning I was better than average at Time Trials. I always passed more people than people passed me.


For this event? I'd trained hard; rested easy, waiting for my body to supercompensate. I really couldn't ask for anything more; but I received a gift anyway. The starting order was set alphabetically.

I was last.


I was the hunter.



Perfect.







"I wonder what Jan Ullrich thought when he heard I won the time trial in Portugal, that I'm winning in February, when I'm nowhere near my peak, and I was thinking what I would do if I heard Ullrich had won a time trial in February? I think I'd get straight down and do fifty sit-ups just to say to myself I was doing something... I think a lot about my opponents. I'm no good at bullshitting. I think about Ullrich all the time".

- Lance Armstrong


This is where it would be nice to deny the quote above, to say that I was nonchalant about the race. I was not. Earlier this week, I started my taper... having put in hard work for months upon months, it was time to rest, and let my body supercompensate.

Of course this left me with an 'extra' two hours every day of free time, as well. So now, I not only had the onus of the race to think about my competitors - I also had plenty of means, plenty of time, as well.

I used that time to my disadvantage. I took the results of a time trial from earlier in the year; and I found all the people that beat me. I used the discrepancy between their results and mine to calculate our estimated power differences, and set my own goals. Every day I check the list of registered participants. I spend an entirely inordinate amount of time analyzing the competition in ultra-sub-peon-level-Michigan-amateur-cycling. Nothing kills like overkill, they say.

I figure I need to do average 26 MPH over an hour-long-effort to win. I've never done it before, the best I've done is slightly slower - 25.5 - for half as long.



"I go today to my borders."

-Jan Ullrich

Or, at least, I *would* go to my own, personal, limits, if I could even have gotten to the start line.

Yesterday the course was flooded. I sent the organizer an e-mail, and he replies back that instead of the race planned, a shorter one would be substituted.

I'm not particularly happy with that, but there really isn't anything that could be done. I spent a couple of hours getting my gear together - last minute brake adjustments, airing up tires, putting a disc cover on my rear wheel.

This morning, I'm running late (as always) for my 9:31 start time. I couldn't find everything I needed; after a frantic (and ultimately successful) search, I get into the car, and head over to the course, only five minutes away.

I register, and receive my number. They tell me my start time is 10:25.

Huh?

"We changed the times to minimize the passing bottlenecks with the shorter course."

Oh. OK.

"And, by the way, we're not using the shorter course. The flood has cleared. We're doing the full course."

Oh. OK. No big deal. Plenty of extra time to overthink my race.


Overthink, for instance, the disc cover I had on my rear wheel. In order to minimize costs - a 'real' disc costs upward of $1000 - I have cheap plastic covers attached to mine. And something isn't looking right as I warm up. The plastic is flexing. It looks particularly un-aerodynamic.

At the last second - OK, the last ten minutes - I make the call to take off the disc-equipped wheel, and run the spare wheel I have, just in case. You know, the spare wheel that doesn't have a tire or tube. As the clock is ticking down, I yank the tire and tube off of the disc, slam it on the normal wheel, and pump it up.

Seven minutes. Plenty of time to spare. More warmup.

Three minutes. I hover near the start, watching others race off. The person scheduled to start immediately prior to me is a no-show. This is a bad thing, one less motivator rabbiting off in front of me.

With one minute to go, and no one in front of me, I come to the start line, feeling not quite right. I decide to make a quick circle around the road to settle down.

The officials yell at me. "FIFTY SECONDS". Fifty seconds is an eternity in a race; why are they so pissed off? There's plenty of time for me to come to the line. In fact, yelling at me gets *me* a little pissed off.



A little pissed off.


Perfect.




I line up with thirty seconds to go. One official is beside me, babbling in my ear nonsense about the course that I can't even pretend to absorb. Another is behind me, grabbing my bike, balancing it so that I can remain seated and sprint away from the line from the first instant.

Five seconds.

The official holds out five fingers.



The thumb goes away.



The pinky disappears. Time begins to slow down.



Ring finger. At the Tour de France, they do a weird hand-finger countdown - five is normal, five finger, four is all four fingers - but then two fingers, the ring and pinky, go away at the same time, and they pop the thumb back up.

My official doesn't do this. I'm a little disappointed. And I have plenty of time before the start to contemplate this.




The Middle finger disappears. Perhaps it would be best if I stopped considering the pros and cons of finger counting, and started to focus on the race.




Index. Time to go.



25 miles to go.


The start line is on a slight downhill, I do my best to explode off the line towards my two-minute man. I have no one to pace my initial effort off the line. The biggest danger is that I will go *too* hard, burn all of my proverbial matches in one five-minute long blaze of glory. Take it easy, take it easy.



I come down the hill, towards the volunteers that are pointing me to a coned-off section of road. I raced this last year. I know where to go. They wave frantically anyway. It doesn't matter. Within ten seconds, I'm at 29 MPH. Too fast, I'll never keep it up. The hardest thing is at the start is to go slow.

A quick right turn, up and down a small knoll. Under a bridge, dodge some potholes, stay in the aerodynamic tuck. What was it a veteran TT'er - who was in fact the number one ranked amateur in the country as one point - told me he repeated to himself, what he concentrated on during his races?

"Power. Cadence. Aero. Demoralize."


A sweeping left turn, into the flats. A graceful right to a gentle slope. My heart rate is catching up to my effort level now. Bump-bump. Bump-bump. Bump-bump. Two bumps per heartbeat, over 180 heartbeats per minute. Six 'bumps' every second for an hour.

I'm passing a golf course on my left, go down a slight decline. A sweeping right, and I come to a hill. The slope slows me to 22 MPH. Ahead, I see the first person I'll pass.

Waaahooowaahooo...


I go by, scream down the other side of the hill at over thirty. I need to keep my speed high. One turn, another. More people hear me coming behind them; I scream by. Six miles down, 19 to go. I get to the first real turn. I wait until the last possible moment; brake as hard as I can. I swing around, and sprint back up to speed.

I check my speed thus far: 26.1 MPH. Perfect.

Second person to pass; I decide to turn the power up a notch. He hears me coming, I convince myself. He knows I'm hunting him down, and there's nothing he can do about it. I fly by.


I pass more people, the turns, the wind, the people, the rain... they all blur together. My legs burn. Not badly enough. I push harder, but it's all I can do to maintain my speed.

Down a hill, back up. Another sweeping right and I'm halfway done, I'm at another turn. A teammate is standing there, taking pictures. She screams at me to go faster.

I can't. I'm going as fast as I can. If this doesn't do it, *I* can't do it.

Her husband, another teammate, had given me some motivation earlier in the week. It was lighthearted, a bit of a parody of Johan Bruyneel screaming at Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. The words echo now: "Fifty seconds". Lance had fifty seconds on Ullrich. Of course, operating without a radio, I have no idea how quickly the others have flew past here; but the actual time gaps, the literal meaning, is irrelevant. The soul of the matter: someone has gone by here, within thirty seconds of my time, I'm sure of it. I must go faster.

The heavy metal music I'd blasted during my warmup starts invading my brain.


I'm a fist of rage
One foot in the grave
I'm a fist of rage
Far from saved
I'm a fist of rage
In a broken state
I'm a razor blade slittin through a wrist of hate
I'm a fist of rage
I'm a fist of rage
I'm a fist of rage

Sweeping turns and people, turns and people. The wheels are ripping the air, I'm constrained in the most aerodynamic tuck I can muster. The road is allegedly closed to traffic, but a truck is meandering on it anyway. I swing out towards the other lane to avoid drafting it, and pass cleanly.

Turns and people. A few have flatted, there's a few cars sweeping those who've had mechanical issue. I'm going into a headwind as I come to the last turnaround, so tired I can't sprint out of it any more. I gradually build up to speed; with the tailwind I'm now flying down the course, averaging about 29 MPH, trying to make up time I've lost on the hills. Fifty seconds, fist of rage, blurry vision. Up and down another hill. I can't remember where the finish line is, until I'm almost at it. I push as hard as I can for the last 200 meters and explode through the end.

There's a clock there, that automatically gives your elapsed time; I figure I need to go sub-58-minutes to win. I'm too dizzy to see it, I'm not really fully cognizant of everything around me. Another rider comes in, and throws his bike to the side of the road in disgust. More people come in; I wait about ten minutes to catch my breath and regain my composure.

I go down to ask the timers about the results.


57:29. 26.4 MPH average. Victory - or, at least, victory in the ultra-sub-peon-Michigan-cycling sense.


The awards ceremony? Pomp and circumstance. Doves were released; the orchestra played "The Star Spangled Banner", followed by "Michigan, My Michigan". I was interviewed by several local television stations.


Oh wait - no - they handed me a medal in a plastic bag. I think they got them on sale at Sam's Club.

Wait - this thing doesn't even say what state!

The biggest surprise? Despite the long length of this article, I'm shocked by how unfulfilling the entire event was. Graham Howard, a pro from Bissell, wasted me, coming in four minutes ahead. Luckily for me, he was in the Pro/1/2 race. I was not.

Sigh... must get faster.