Great Lakes - Psimet, Aham . . . How'd the TTT go?

Inquiring minds want to know . . . or did I miss the post somewhere already?

Working on a post for my blog, but I will copy it here.....

1:23 minutes of acid churning pain. It was a blast.

I picked up aham Sunday morning for the Team Time Trial put on by ABR out in Herscher, IL just West of Kankakee. It's good times just to be hanging with someone like aham on a nice mroning on the way to go ride bikes.

On the trip we discussed my mistakes with inadequate warmup before events. When we got there it was about what I expected to see....a superhero convention in the middle of a small town surrounded by corn fields.

We were outgunned and knew it, but we brought our biggest cans of whoop-ass and decided to give it the old college try. I hit the trainer and tried to work up a sweat. aham hit the road with my set of wheels on his rig (a way to try to lighten his gear a bit).

With some flotbots playing from starship psimet I tried to put on my "race face" - which BTW kind of resembles my "I have to take a big crap" face. "Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE!" became my mantra.

Point of note here. This would be my second TT ever. The first was early this spring when I slapped on some clip-ons on to my road rig and went for a ride. I was decimated. I beat one guy in the 60+ category and at least one "Junior" under 16 racer. That was it. They might as well have handed me a pair of panties at registration with my number and said, "just put these on instead. It will save us all a lot of time and effort and the result will be the same."

I needed blood.

aham and I rode a small section off course in a last minute prep then took our place in staging. Staging is fun...NOT! It's not like other races where you line up, milling around, getting a little nervous then get a 2 second speach and you're off. No...instead TT staging is where you get to line up and listen to "high-tech" timing devices make beeps and count down every 30 seconds or so. It SOOOOOOO adds to the drama.

To top things off we have a set of juniors going off in front of us (3 spots - 3 minutes). I looked at aham and told him I felt like saying, "good luck. You better not beat me or I'll kick your ass after this is done" to them, but alas there were other supervising adults present.

Even better one of our Tuesday Night Group Ride resident aliens was lined up in a team about 6 back from us. UGHHHH!!!!

Alien2: "Hey psimet!"
psimet: "Hey alien2. So how far are you back from us?"
Alien2: "6 minutes."
psimet: "Oh....so we should expect to see you somewhere around 12 minutes in? You'll be going twice as fast right?"
Alien2: "HAHAHAHAHAHA...yeah...right....well....maybe. :) "
psimet:

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......

Every minute another set of ridicuously expensive carbon wheels went whooshing off the line.

"Riders 9:19!"

A couple of "bent racers". Really freaky fast on the ground recumbent bicycles with more carbon and technology on them than on a top end race car.

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......

"Riders 9:20!"

A couple of dudes messing with a last minute bike problem. I'm resisting my urge to help out last minute knowing it will throw off my mo-jo.

"Just a brake problem. I don't need those anyway. Hahahahahah."

I feel like I want to vomit.

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......

"Riders 9:21! OK Good...team psimet and aham? Good. OK you will hear a first beep at 30 seconds. The next series will be for the last 5 seconds. Go on the long tone. You have 2 laps. 50k total. Come by this start house to begin the second lap. Watch for riders. Finish in the <30> straight behind us. just keep going straight - don't take the turn the second time. Number? Good. Have fun guys."

Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
......pain.

I had put a flimsy "gameplan" in place with aham at the start. i told him I always get pumped up at the start of stuff and will go out harder than I would like. Without being warmed up I tend to go hard until I pop and then recover for a bit until I hit my stride so to speak. I did just that.

aham was looking like he was already hurting. I was gapping him when coming to the front to pull. I would sit up to slow down and he would rocket past me putting himself right back in front. Result was that neither of us got a good break for a few minutes. Then we settled into a 1 minute rotation.

We passed the juniors near the end of the first leg of the first lap. YAY!!! 1 mental victory achieved. I knew we were going to get passed soon and often. I don't think aham was ready for how soon or often. There were some beasts out there. I think we were 2-3 teams down just on the first leg.

Second leg was a fast one. I was able to get in position and make the equipment work the way it was supposed to. I kept seeing 25-26mph when I was looking down. aham and I were hoping to finish with 23 for the run.

...I'll finish later.

Point of note here. This would be my second TT ever. The first was early this spring when I slapped on some clip-ons on to my road rig and went for a ride. I was decimated. I beat one guy in the 60+ category and at least one "Junior" under 16 racer. That was it. They might as well have handed me a pair of panties at registration with my number and said, "just put these on instead. It will save us all a lot of time and effort and the result will be the same."


Thanks.. I just spit watermelon all over my laptop. Made me laugh hard.

+1

Hilarious!!!!

Awaiting the conclusion . . .

Panties ... LOL!

finish the damn story. i am dying to know the outcome. :)

later.

finish the damn story. i am dying to know the outcome. :)

later.

:wtf:

....you were there? Oh you mean, MY interpretation of the event? ;):D

^^^^ oh yeah.

my memory is foggy. i was just released from the pain cave this morning. what day is it????

later.

:wtf:

....you were there? Oh you mean, MY interpretation of the event? ;):D

Yeah like...

Commentator #1: So in the last 200 meter psimet gets out of the saddle and outsprints aham23 in an exciting show of dominance of power and perfection.
Commentator #2: Yeah, but somewhat of a strange ending. I can only guess in his delirious state of adrenalin and pain he must have forgotten that he is in a TTT and not the final sprint in a 2 man break away.

So...there we are on the second leg of the first loop. I'm feeling the burn. I'm also feeling something else. I had a chance to ride the TT setup for about 20 miles before the actual event. Not really enough to perfectly dial it in. During the event I was actually cranking about 10 rpm higher than what I did during my trial.

10rpm doesn't seem like much to most people, but when it comes to bike fit for me it appears as though it is the difference between staying in place on a slightly down tilted nose saddle or sliding forward. Apparently I was going to be doomed to sliding forward for the rest of the event.

As some of you no doubt know it really sucks to end up having something small wrong when you are in a race. During a century ride or group ride you have the option of just pulling over and fixing it quickly. During an event that would mean your event is over. So I just had to deal with it. To top it off the extreme position also allowed me to remember that losing feeling in certain areas is a sensation that I do not enjoy.

So we were making good time on good pavement, but I was starting to get uncomfortable and we had a long race still left. We turned on to leg 3 and there was a pretty wicked wind - mostly cross wind I believe. The helmet and speed were making it hard for me to really tell which way the wind was coming from. I just knew it hurt.

There were a couple of rollers and it was along this leg that we were finally passed by alien2. "Hey psimet." Thanks....I appreciate that. One thing to pass me on a TT, but it's another to do it fast enough that I had to look quickly to see who it was as well as to do it with enough wind in your chest to yell hello. Like it's just a Sunday ride - well...I guess it technically was.

This was my, "here have this set of panties" moment for this TT.

From there we hit the home stretch of the first loop. Dead on headwind from hell. We dropped a lot off of our speed. We were still struggling along right at 20 (seriously....I love that I was thinking of 20 as being slow regardless of the headwind). I was looking down at the Garmin and thinking, "Oh crap. This isn't going to work. I hope everyone else is suffering this bad."

It was around here that the 1 minute pulls started to disappear. I was too busy suffering to look at the clock, and I am a wheel sucker by nature. It just so happens it was around here that aham says he feels like he kind of hit a rhythm. Coincidence?

Rounding the corner of the start house and knowing you were just about to start all of this over again was just....well....demoralizing. I was hurting on leg 1 of the second lap for sure. By the time we hit leg 2 I was losing it. We were still doing OK, but then I just cracked. I sat up and yelled at aham that I needed to get some food in me or something. He sat up and tried to get a gel in as well.

By the time we hit the third leg I was feeling better, but the little rollers were enough to keep me just beghind aham's wheel trying to hold on. Turning the last corner I was feeling burned, but good. I was definitely getting a saddle sore the size of Texas, but I knew we only had about 2-3 miles left. When we rounded it there were a few groups in front of us. We had passed a few groups during the rest of the race, but not many. This represented an opportunity to lay some hurt on someone else. If aham wasn't going to take on the chase I was definitely going to.

Well...great minds think alinke. He just poured it on until we dropped their butts....even though they were definitely in the "masters" cats we toasted them (they were old). Once the passes were done aham swung off. I could see the finish line in the distance and really realized I had some serious juice left.

I then proceeded to blow aham off the back. News flash here folks...It's a TTT - Team Time Trial. That means it doesn't matter if I sprinted to the line or not - it was the finishing time of the second team member who set the time for the ride. I sat up and he grabbed on. We both sprinted for the line - simultaneously realizing that was most likely the hardest thing either of us had done on a bike - speed wise.

We hung around for a bit - traded impressions of what happened, etc. then hit the car for the ride home.

I just pulled the results from the site and now know this:

We placed 32 out of 51 teams. We came in last in our cat. We beat the following: 1 cat 1/2 team (they must have had a mechanical), 1 masters30+ from ABD, 1 Masters 40+ from Team Mack, 2 Masters 50 + from Vision Quest and Velo Roubaix, 1 Masters 60+ from Vision Quest, 5 other Masters teams - getting older, 1 set of juniors - extrapolating their data for 2 laps, and all 6 women's teams including their fastest team.

Stats:
1:24:23 for 31.16 miles = 22.26mph average.

Chart of the averages of each cat....yes I have no life and I knew you guys would be interested.

Pain fest: EDIT: These are averages...
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2912/tttspeeddistributionlk8.png

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/4674/tttspeeddistribution2fw8.png

good stuff.

we didnt finish last. maybe next time i can train for it and not suck it so much.

maybe :) .

later.

There were a couple of rollers and it was along this leg that we were finally passed by alien2. "Hey psimet." Thanks....I appreciate that. One thing to pass me on a TT, but it's another to do it fast enough that I had to look quickly to see who it was as well as to do it with enough wind in your chest to yell hello. Like it's just a Sunday ride - well...I guess it technically was.

This was my, "here have this set of panties" moment for this TT.


Ain't us aliens stinkers!

:roflmao2: :roflmao2:

What category is 'R'?

What category is 'R'?

Recumbent....Recumbulators. *shiver*

You have a future in writing Psi ... loved it and nice job.