Forty K Day

I'm not exactly sure when kilometers went from being Km to simply K. If I said I'd give you 40K you'd think I meant forty thousand, right? Somehow, though, when you're talking about a race distance, K=kilometers. Doesn't make sense, but hey, I can live with it. So today was the La/Ms state time trial championship, conveniently being held about half an hour from home. Since Courtney had graciously lent me her Cervelo TT bike, I figured I couldn't escape riding this one. So yesterday morning I'd gone out and ridden 30 miles or so on it, solo. For those who might be just now tuning in, 30 miles does not a time trial training program make. Then again, I can't remember any time in the last 35-plus years when I actually trained for a time trial. I've always considered them necessary evils. Sort of like getting a rather painful medical test that usually confirms that you're in worse shape than you'd hoped.

A little cool front had come through on Saturday, so Sunday morning when I arrived at the TT location to help with registration (I was also the Chief Ref for this one), it was a little cooler and trier than usual and a whole lot windier. Any hopes I'd had for a personal best were blown right out the window for sure. Fortunately, I didn't have any such hopes, so no worries there. Registration went exceedingly smoothly since there actually wasn't any. Pre-registration had been required for this event, so people just had to pick up their race numbers and a few of them had to get one-day licenses. I wandered over to the motor home that was serving as Midsouth Masters' headquarters to set up the computer so it would be ready for results when I finished riding.

The time trial felt pretty hard - harder than my lackluster time of 59:01 would suggest, anyway. There was a pretty stiff headwind all the way out, although for the first mile or two it was more of a crosswind. The starter said "go" and off I went. The first time I glanced at the computer it said 27 mph. I thought that seemed a little high, but I also thought how nice it would be if I could keep it in that general vicinity. By the time I hit two miles I was down to about 25 and already questioning why I was doing this. Luckily, my minute man was teammate Jorge Perera, who was going just the slightest bit slower than I, which is the best kind of minute man to have, I think. So all the way out I battled the headwind, just barely edging closer to Jorge. When I hit the unprotected area about midway out, the wind hit me like a wall and my speed dropped down to 22 mph for a little while. That was pretty depressing, and I struggled to maintain speeds of 24-25 most of the rest of the way. After the turnaround, though, the tailwind was noticeable and it was easy to hold 27. I probably should have, could have, gone faster, but it had been so long since I'd done a TT, I really had no confidence, so my speed fluctuated between 26 and 30 all the way back and I ended up coming across the line one second behind Jorge. So I came in 3rd in the 50-54 age group, which was only 5 seconds out of first, but wasn't even in the same zip code as the fastest time of the day, which was Bain Foote's 52:49. I have to admit, although I might be able to dream of a 40km TT time of something like 57 minutes, I cannot even relate to the sustained speed and power needed to turn in a sub-53 minute TT on a day when the trees were bending in the wind.

I headed for the water cooler, dumped a cupful of water over my face, changed out of my antique skinsuit and headed to the motorhome to start on the results. It turned out to be a lot more confusing than I'd hoped because they hadn't been writing down the actual start times, which meant that as I was switching between fifteen or so separate spreadsheets in the results workbook I had to make sure I was getting the start times right. Luckily some of the riders in the motorhome knew their own times and I could use that as a crosscheck to confirm that I hadn't gotten off by a minute one way or the other. We got everything wrapped up around 1:00 and I headed home where I spent the next few hours setting up the results website, uploading results to the USAC Results & Rankings system, etc. After a long break for dinner at my mother's place that included ice cream and cake in celebration of my niece's birthday, I came home and filled out the post-event paperwork, fixed a couple of minor problems on the website, fired off a few emails, and so here it is almost midnight and I still haven't taken a shower. Maybe I should do that now...