Profile of the course.
Hey everyone,
This is a race report of the first event of the Dallas/Fort Worth race weekend. So, the Friday before the event was a pretty busy day for me. I had to leave at 3:00 PM, so I needed to make sure that I would be able to run all of my errands, as well as put in a light pre-race ride before I left. Since I wanted more control over what time I arrived at the race, I decided that this time I would drive and transport my bike myself. Thus, I headed out to Target and Home Depot in order to pick up some travelling supplies, and I purchased a plank of wood, along with a quick release skewer to hold my bike in place as I drove. When I got home, it took me about an hour to construct the bike holder:
Packed up and ready to go.
I only had about an hour to go out so I did a quick ride with a few sprints. When I back home, I packed up and drove to the CPE parking lot where I met the rest of my teammates. For Category A, Sean was our one-man team. We had a very strong Category B team with Hogan, Geisinger, Ken, and Jacob. For Category D we had me and Joseph. Whitney would ride in Women’s A, and Danielle would ride in Women’s B.
We left at about 3:45 and we had horrible traffic the whole way. After taking us two hours to get to Waco, we decided to take a break and get dinner at Jason’s Deli. After another two hours of driving, we finally got to Dallas where we stayed at Joseph’s brother’s apartment where we spent the night. However, I didn’t sleep all that well. Fortunately, I was able to wake up at 5:00 AM to go get breakfast and arrive at the race course.
There were some registration issues so the race started about an hour and a half late, which gave me ample time to warm up. It was pretty cold outside, about 50 degrees farenheit. I had never done a time trial before, so I asked Ken for some advice. He pretty much told me to go as hard as I thought I could for about thirty minutes. I had also read elsewhere that most people who are new to time trialing usually started out too hard, which made it difficult to put in enough effort towards the end. For those of you who aren’t familiar with time trialing, a time trial is a type of short race in which everyone starts individually, as opposed to a mass start race in which everyone starts together. For this particular time trial, the course was roughly 12 miles long with riders starting 30 seconds apart. Riders are not allowed to draft, and drafting will result in either a time penalty or disqualification. The person who completes the course in the shortest amount of time wins the race.
When the start times were posted up, I learned that Joseph would be my thirty-second man, and I told him to go hard and try not to get caught by me. When the race officials called my group, Joseph and I lined up. When it was my turn to go, one of the race officials held me upright by my saddle to let me clip in. It was pretty cool because I didn’t have to mount my bike in the traditional way. Anyways, another official started a countdown from five seconds, and then I was off.
The profile of the course isn’t as bad as it looks on that graph up there. You can see that the elevation difference is only 100 feet, which isn’t far at all. I would say that non-climbing specialists and even pure sprinters wouldn’t have a difficult time with it. It was mostly just rolling hills.
I tried to go hard, but not too hard so as to burn myself out. After a few minutes of riding I could see Joseph in front of me. I knew I was a little bit more experienced than Joseph, so I knew I would probably catch him as the race went along. I didn’t want to catch him too early just in case I tried too hard, so I used Joseph as a sort of carrot to gauge my progress. After about 4 miles, I was only about 20m away from Joseph, so I decided to speed up to make the catch. Unfortunately, as I was about to do this, my own thirty-second man from OBU came from behind me and passed me up, so for a moment it looked as if the three of us were riding together. It only took a few seconds to spread us apart, and I decided then to pass Joseph. I decided to let the OBU guy go because I wasn’t sure if I could hold his pace. At the 5 mile mark I saw another guy from Oklahoma University and I was about to catch him. I was very excited because I didn’t expect to catch two riders in the TT…I wasn’t even expecting to catch one. It’s a little unfair though, because the OU guy wasn’t using clipless pedals, and his bike wasn’t as good as mine. So after the 6th mile, I passed him up. The last half of the course was brutal. I looked behind me a few times to see if my minute man was anywhere close, but when I looked back I saw nothing…a good sign. When I looked ahead, it seemed like the OBU guy caught another guy, which means he caught four riders! I knew he would finish with a very strong time. I thought about accellerating to catch the guy in front of me, but I decided that it would take too much effort, as he was going pretty fast as well.
When I reached the finish line, I was so out of it that I couldn’t put in the effort to sprint. It looks like I tried too hard at the beginning even though I didn’t think I was trying hard at all…a rookie mistake. I’ll think of that next time when I go to Fort Davis Hammerfest next month.
I didn’t know the results until Monday, when I learned that I got 10th place, which was the middle of the pack. Joseph finished three or four places after me. A Rice guy won the race, beating Jay Coleman of OU by one second, who had previously won almost every race since the beginning of racing season. For men’s B, Ken podiumed by getting third, a very good result for him considering that he was sick the week before. I think maybe I could have done what Ken did: he was passed by the eventual winner, Roy Bracey, but he decided to use Roy afterward as a carrot, and thus finished with a very good time. I think if I had done that with the OBU guy, I could have gotten a better result. It wasn’t a bad result for a first time trial, but it was a little lower than I thought I would be since I passed two guys. Anyways, I was slightly disappointed because I finished right behind three Rice guys, and I wanted to beat at least one of them in the time trial because we make fun of them a lot whenever we play football against them. I guess cycling is a kind of way for them to get revenge against UT…sort of, not that many Rice kids actually care about football. Nevertheless, since I finished right behind them I know that I’m just nipping at their heels…I’ll just keep training until I can beat them.