Well, that was fun. I turned up to marshall, thinking I might try to squeeze in a TTT run if I could find some people to ride with. Turned out there were sufficient marshalls, so Peter Lawless convinced me to enter the solo TT event “as a warmup for the TTT”. I’ve never done a dedicated TT, and don’t own a TT bike. I did a couple triathlons a few years ago, but didn’t know much about cycling back then. I guess I don’t know a whole lot more now, but at least I’ve read some of Anika’s blogs, so I know things like “Don’t go out too strong” and “pain cave”.
Neil and I got lost on the way to the start/finish line, but showed up just in time for our runs. Neil was 35th to start and I was 36th, so we were near the end. As I was just about to push off, I turned to Sig nearby and said, “What percentage of max heart rate should I be targeting?” He rattled off a range and as I started the race I started doing arithmetic in my head to pick my target.
The start was mostly uphill for the first couple km, so I tried to rein myself in a bit and not go too hard. Within a few minutes I started focusing on the heart rate monitor (my new toy) and settled into the high side of my target range. I figured if I made it to the halfway point and felt OK, I could ramp things up a bit. It was raining which was a bit of a drag, but I slogged on.
I was feeling decent at the turnaround, but tired enough that I didn’t want to push things too much yet, so I waited until the 30km mark, to ramp up a little. The sun came out and I started pushing myself harder on the downhills and gunning slightly for the rider I could occasionally spot in front of me down the road. Having the computer was great for pacing myself. I wanted to drain my energy by the finish line, though I had to keep fending off the little voice in my head that said I should save a little for the TTT. As the finish line loomed, I could definitely feel my speed dropping, my energy waning, and my legs hurting. It was great to hear some familiar voices cheering at the finish. It felt like I’d paced things pretty well.
After this “warmup” I had about 10 minutes until our TTT team was set to go. My legs were hurting (not pain cave hurt, but hurt enough). Neil had recruited Keith to join us. About 1 minute before our start we strong-armed Alan, the “Bollard Buster” to join us—in spite of his still feeling some ill effects of jousting with inanimate set-in-concrete objects. We’d never ridden together before, so the first few km were chaotic with lots of chatter and “steady!” and “rolling!” and “shorter pulls!” being hollered around as we broke apart and came back together again. After a few km Alan dropped his chain and the rest of us (being ruthlessly competitive Tripleshotters) pushed on. Things eventually settled down and we started to find a rhythm. Neil was awesome on the downhills. I had been harping on about short hard pulls on the downhills, and so he took a short hard pull on one particularly long downhill on the way back, and pulled to the side about halfway down. That put me in the lead and I simply couldn’t pass him. I was going as hard as I could, and Neil was soft-pedaling and I couldn’t drag myself past him. I finally blew up and let Keith—who was more aero and stronger—take over. In retrospect we should have put Neil out front more on the downhills.
Anyway, we managed to put in a respectable show, I think, with me barely clinging to the back (yelling “Steady Steady Steady!”) as we crossed the finish.
As icing on the cake, I learned at the awards ceremony that I got second place in the 40-44 age group individual TT. And Alan, Keith, Neil and I got third in the TTT (we were referred to as the "Tripleshot youngsters" at the awards presentation). Don’t ask me how many people/teams competed in each of those categories. It’s my first time ever on the podium in any sport, and I’m going to savour it!
Peter Lawless got gold in 40-44 individual TT (jerk), and Joe Barrett got gold (I think) in his age group and his TTT team (with Steve Keillor and someone else?) got silver (?). There may have been others—fill in my blanks. More people should turn up for these things—for the fun and for the bling.
Thanks to all the organizers and volunteers and TSers who showed up to cheer!
Martin
