#289: Oak Ridge TT
After a few hours after picking up Andrea from her road race victory, Andrea and I headed to the other side of Oak Ridge to race the 8 mile TT held within the secure area of Oak Ridge labs (or whatever it is called). Unfortunately, the TT was running an hour behind…. At least I didn’t start warming up early since I knew about the time shift. While we were waiting, I got the opportunity to try out one of the handcyclists’ bikes. It was a a bit different than I expect. Those things are hard to turn (granted I was trying to turn a tight circle in the parking lot). I ended up “cheating” using my feet to move it around. I didn’t want to run into anything trying to get turned around. (The guy that we talked to used to ride a regular bike, but was partially paralyzed after getting hit by a car on a training ride.)
The course is the same mostly flat course (1-2% false flats) as last year. Since the road is closed to normal traffic, your first look at it is your race. I started off pretty well and quickly settled into a rhythm that I felt I could maintain for the duration (last year with fresh legs, I rolled a 19:10). The wattage shown by my Polar CS600 WIND power meter (which is a pain to deal with, but when it works gives workable numbers) were under target wattage on the outbound leg (looking down occasionally). When I downloaded the file, the numbers were close to target (maybe even a bit high IMHO). Anyway, I left it all out on course… To get a self timed 19:06 (official time was 19:08).
The results were emailed out later that night and I found that my effort was good for 11th out of ~20 riders. Not terrible, but worse than I expected given my perceived effort and Polar data. What it does tell me (along with several similar experiences with LAMBRA stage race TT’s) that my road bike conversion TT bike needs to be changed out. It is not so much the frame aerodynamics, which are not too bad on my Kebel, but it is the position that I am not able to obtain. Just not low enough. Looks like I will need to get a frame this winter and stop messing with the half-measures that clearly aren’t working. The road bike conversion has got me through two seasons as an incremental step above clip-on aerobars. This bike has taught me a bit about what I want and need in terms of geometry which I can use to pick out a frame for the 2010 road campaign. One more race on the Kebel (Chattanooga BMW Omnium next weekend).
After the TT, nearly the whole Memphis Velo team in attendance converged on Big Ed’s pizza in Oak Ridge. Our table put down 5 large pizzas and I am not sure how many pitchers of beer. It was a celebration of a good day of racing and teamwork. My Cat 3 state jersey, (Andrea’s Woman 1/2/3 jersey), and Todd’s 3rd place finish in the road race were probably as good as we have had it team (although Andrea is not a current MV’er, but you know what I mean).
The next morning came up quick and unfortunately, due to timing we didn’t get mobilized fast enough to catch the handcyclists criterium….
(rest of post will have to wait, this is all I could get written in the car before I had to take over driving.) Time to go to bed….
Galleries from the Sunday crit are up:
