Madera Stage Race: Time Trial 3/13/2010

Category: W3
Field Size: 22
Length: 10 miles
Teammates: Emily and Josie
Places: 2nd (me), 4th (Emily), and 8th (Josie)

The time trial course was vaguely rectangular, with 2 90 degree right turns, then a turn that was closer to 100-110 degrees, then another slight right onto the finishing stretch. The course was dead flat, except for a number of pothole of various sizes, as well as some rough pavement. The hard part though was the wind. I'm terrible at judging how fast the wind in blowing, but it was a very strong wind, I would guess around 20mph gusting to 30mph. It was so windy that if you set a bike up parallel to the wind and let go, it would roll by itself. Since the course was rectangular, that meant that for the first leg, there was a cross tail wind, for the second side, there was a big tailwind, the third side was a strong cross headwind, and turning onto the fourth side felt like hitting a brick wall. Since this was my first time trial, I got to try out my new TT bike and see how it was, as well as using a bunch of borrowed stuff. For wheels, I had brought Jose's Zipp 404 tubulars, as well as a Zipp disc wheel. Given the wind and my lack of experience using the aero bars, especially with deep wheels, I opted not to use the disc and stuck with the 404s. Given that on the 3rd leg of the TT with a strong cross headwind with gusts I was being blown all over the road, I was very glad that I didn't use the disc, as I think it would have been much worse and I might have even been blown over. As it was, I was leaning into the wind on that side just to stay in the right lane of the road. My other aero equipment consisted of a nice Giro TT helmet (Jose's), a long sleeve skinsuit (a little too big for me, but still much better than a normal kit) and shoe covers (thanks Heather!). I found that my long hair is not very aero, so I ended up doubling up my braid twice so that it fit underneath the back of the helmet. I decided that this is the final straw, and that I am going to cut my hair short (probably to minimum ponytail length) whenever I upgrade to Cat 2. Anyway, I went out pretty hard at the beginning of the time trial, knowing that it would be very easy to go too easy by accident due to the tailwind on the first two stretch. I got into a rhythm right away and just concentrated in keeping up the intensity and chasing down the person in front of me. I don't remember how many people I passed, but I always had another target in front of me to catch. I think I passed about 8 people, give or take a couple. Unfortunately, I think I lost a couple of seconds on the second corner, since I slowed down a little more than necessary, having misjudged my line. I did leave my aero bars on the 3 sharp corners, since I wasn't completely confident in my ability to turn in the bars with the additional complication of the strong wind. By the third leg I was going quite hard and I tried to hunker down into a slightly lower position because the wind was so strong. I think that I judged my effort just about right, since when I saw the sign for 1km to go, I don't think I was able to speed up at all, since by that time I had already been going as fast as I could for a while, and it was all I could do to keep it up until the finish.

For all of my effort, I finished 2nd, a full 1:05 behind first place. Then again, since Tyler Stewart is a world-class professional Ironman Triathlete, I don't feel to bad for losing, since it was my first time trial. Next time I'll put my bars a little lower for a better position, and maybe I can cheat the wind a little more. I beat the 3rd place finisher by 11 seconds, and Emily came in 4th at 2:02 behind 1st place. Josie managed to get a very respectable 8th place finish as well.