Church Creek Time Trial

This was the longest time trial event I have ever ridden. The distance itself was nothing - less than 25 miles? I'll do that a couple times a week and not even think twice about it. But a 24.8 mile TIME TRIAL? Yikes.

The time trial is a tough event because you basically push your muscles to the limit for the entire duration of the race. There is no drafting, no group riding. There is no rest, no respite, no recovery - it's pure effort the entire way. That being said, my strategy going into the race was to pick a pace that I felt confident I could keep up for the entire duration of the race.

Team BBC Time Trial Coming In

I woke up at 5:00AM and ate three pieces of buttered toast with blackberry jam; they were delicious. I tried to do the math and figure out what 200 calories per hour until race time would dictate, but the early morning time addled my mathematical sensibilities.

Filled up the gas tank and met teammate Jennie at the park and ride for the 2-hour drive down across the bay bridge into the Eastern Shore. I hadn't been here since the Seagull Century last fall, so seeing the sights was enjoyable. We rolled up to the registration area pretty early, which turned out to be a really good thing because I had forgotten my race license and had to look it up on my phone to prove to the organizers that my license was up to date.

Team captain extraordinaire Mojo had arrived even earlier to get ready for his individual team trial, and had graciously set up an awesome team tent replete with cold water and CeraSport sports drink. He took off to go to his Cat 3 individual time trial start while Jennie and I were still getting our act together: checking tire pressure, applying sunscreen, filling water bottles and so forth. Teammates Ted and Tina rolled up while we were working on that, and went and got registered.

Around 10:30 I rolled out to make it to my 10:59 start time. The registration area was at a middle school about 5 miles away from the start, which made logistics an interesting exercise. I am glad that I allowed a half an hour to get there, because I forgot my timing chip and had to go back to get it. By the time I rolled up to the starting tent, the official time was about 10:54. Five minutes to go.

At the starting line, a staffer held my seat while I clipped in. I had shifted into my big chainring up front and a big cog in the back, as internet wisdom told me that this strategy would help reduce the possibility that I would drop my chain when I shifted to the big chainring after I got moving. 3, 2, 1 and I was off. A few seconds in, and I was in a strong gear with my heart rate quickly rising up towards the upper edge of aerobic metabolism.

The first 10KM of the race flew by, with my speed jumping up to 29mph in the beginning and then settling into a more reasonable 25mph as my body realized that it was going to have to keep the same pace for quite a while. The pavement was smooth and the flat Eastern Shore scenery was cruising by, and then the course made a sharp right-hand turn. This was when things got a little ugly. The pavement, which had been a beautifully paved brand new asphalt, turned into a bumpy ride on old gray road surface. At the same time, the wind (which I had been nervously eying on the way down by looking at various flags flapping in the breeze) managed to blow directly into my path of travel. Now, pedaling at anything over 22mph on a flat surface requires quite a bit of effort just to overcome your own self-generated wind; throw an 8-10mph  headwind into the mix and things get tough.

I managed to hang in there; if you look at the data you can see that my heart rate stayed pretty steady even though my speed dropped. I think this was the appropriate response; rather than killing my legs to maintain my speed, I conserved energy to use later when the wind was not in my face.

The course continued to be flat as a pancake. Around 30KM I started to pass people; by 35KM I started passing them in clumps. Some were from my category, some were stragglers from the category that had started before us. Either way, each person I passed was a slight boost to my energy level as my ego reinforced my legs (shameless narcissism plug). The real ego boost is when you pass people on uber-aero carbon-fiber tri bikes with disc wheels and TT helmets and you're riding a 20-year old road bike with an ancient gruppo and bolt-on aerobars that are literally falling off the bike.  (end shameless narcissism plug).

We made a right-hand turn onto a highway with a wide shoulder, great pavement, and a very slight tailwind, and I was able to pick the pace back up from a somewhat bedraggled 22mph to a more robust 25-26mph. I even kicked it down a gear for a few minutes; I was aiming to keep a nice quick ~100RPM pedaling cadence. From what I've read, pushing a lighter gear at a faster RPM is more leg-friendly than mashing a big gear at slow RPM. I'm not sure if this is meant more for road racing than time-trialling though, as I saw many people pushing a big gear slowly.

I screwed up the math in my head as I was riding - I tried to convert 40KM to miles, and came up with 25.2 miles for some reason; when the finish tent came up at the (correctly calculated) 24.8 miles, I was taken a bit by surprised and pushed everything I had into my pedals. I zipped across the finish mat at a brisk 29 miles per hour, and panted my way over to where the water cooler was to recover a bit.

I won second place in the men's Cat 5 division!

While I was sitting in the shade letting the blood flow from my legs back into my brain, I tried to calculate how long it would take my teammates to finish their team time trial (they had started when I was about halfway through my ITT). I reasoned out that I had enough time to go back to the registration area and get my car and some water to bring back for the team.

I came back and took a photo of the team as they crossed the finish line in second place! We hung out for a bit and then cruised back to the registration area to collect our medals and break down the team tent. A quick stop for lunch on the way out capped off a fantastically fun day of racing.

Great day with great people at a really fun event!

Strava Data