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What Garry saw:
Category: Masters 90+
Result: Top ten
Teamed up with Carl in the very competitive Masters 90+ category. The other team from FFBC was Mike Zuerlein and Keith Jordan, who raced in the Cat 4 department.
Time trials take practice and preparation. Did the prep part, but could do with more practice.
The prep part included for me adding on the aero bars and then making a nifty custom spacer block to stop the bars rotating down (thanks to Mike Kauffman). I also swapped out my saddle and seat post and replaced it with a post upon which another saddle was positioned to provide maximum comfort, i.e., nose down. I did not have time to prepare my new super fast rear wheel, so I just went with the regular Ksyrium at the back, but I did put on my deep section front wheel with 24 radial bladed spokes. I did some practice rides to dial in the seat height and angle and made one ride the week before a 90% effort. All good to go for the Sunday race.
Carl and I went out to the course on the Saturday before to re-acquaint ourselves with the terrain. This proved to be really useful.
The course uses the same lap as the Berkeley Hills RR course and it is not an easy parcours. The start for the TTT is at the junction of Old San Pablo Dam Road, which is now the access road to the boat launch area for San Pablo Dam Reservoir. This area also served as the Race HQ.
The course goes north on San Pablo Dam Road and then turns right on to Castro Ranch Road, near El Sobrante. Along this section Carl and I were trading equal turns and had a good rhythm. Just after the right is a stop sign, but a police officer and course marshal were positioned to wave us through. Just after this is a small rise and I had to go WAAAYYYY over my LT to keep up with Carl. Then it's small rollers and drags and Carl and I regrouped until to a fast down hill to turn a fast right on to Alhambra Road.
This is a long slightly uphill and twisty road with a slow surface and I was feeling good on this section and maybe took the majority pull, and then another right takes us on to Bear Creek Road. About a mile from this junction the climbing starts. Now I don't know which one of these bastard climbs are Mama, Papa or Baby bear, but I do know they have no right to be at the end of a TTT. They all hurt like a SOB and are very demoralizing. Carl was leading on the climbs setting the pace and I just hung on as best I could. Over the final climb and we descended at a really good speed to finish in a side by side sprint.
Our finish time was 46:36.4, which is faster than I thought we would do, especially after our recce ride the day before, where I felt like crap. The winners in our category, and the winners overall was Larry Nolan and Kevin Metcalfe who did a 40:46. They beat the next team in our category by 2:39! We came eighth in our category out of 23 teams, so another top 10. We also came 43rd out of 143 teams in the overall.
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What Keith J saw:
Category: 4
Result: Top ten
Mike showed up at 6:30 as discussed and we quickly loaded up gear and hit the road. In no time we arrived at the race and began registration etc. Which by the way was a very pleasant experience - everyone was very knowledgeable and eager to help, while the online reg kept the lines short and fast as there was no paperwork to fill out.
Ok reg is done, I hopped on my trainer for maybe 10 min, then hopped off to check some stuff on the bike - it was time to go line up.
Got in line and before I knew it we were off! This is where my world turned upside down. I can only speculate that my legs were completely cold and not ready for the 0-WOT (wide open throttle) that was needed to compete on this course... uphill no less. It must have taken 5miles of me trying to hold Mikes wheel before I shelled my legs completely. I was sucking wind and had a great amount of pain in my legs. Had a whole lot of WTH is going on???? Multiple times Mike needed to soft pedal to let me catch up and grab his wheel... I'm sure my tongue was flapping in the wind. Then some abdominal cramps set in to complement the searing pain in my legs. I was doing my best not to shatter completely as we had to cross the finish line together.
The course had a 2 good climbs and some rollers into the wind, next year I will leave the TT bars off the bike as I didn’t use them at all.
Mike basically TT the event solo with an anchor attached to his wheel. I was pretty much worthless. I shelled my legs and had nothing to give.
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What Mike Z saw:
Category: 4
Result: Top ten
I guess I don't have a lot to add. Needless to say I was surprised at what happened to Keith. I fully expected that he would do more of the load in front than me based on all of the training rides I have been on with him. We should have talked more about warmup. I don't do the best job, but I did make 2 or 3 efforts into Zones 4 and 5 before the race started.
My heart rate was between 170 and 180 basically the entire race except for a short downhill section. This is pretty typical for me for a solo time trial. ;>) I felt good at the start but was wearing down by the hills. We finished in 46:31 for 10th place in the 4's and about 40th out of 150 overall. My heart rate averaged 174 with a max of 182. Basically, I averaged my lactate threshold heart rate.
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