Hello fellow mature cyclists,
Between Facebook, Twitter, and Bike Forums, I've been hard-pressed to keep up with all of the sub forums that interest me.
As some of you know, I have been racing bicycles since the mid-1970s and now, as a 50+ Master bike racer, I have been setting various yearly goals to keep up my interest level in the sport. I don't set stretch goals that are unachievable by my average racing capabilities as I get depressed when I can't achieve any goals.
However, there has been one lifetime goal that I was beginning to think that I would never achieve -- ride a 40 Km (24.8 mile) individual time trial (ITT) in less than 1 hour. (When I started racing bicycles the distance was actually a full 25 miles but sometime in the early 1980s the US governing body for the sport decided to go metric.)
So jumping to the end of the story, I finally did it. I would have been happy with 59 minutes and 59 seconds (59:59) but somehow, after doing about a half dozen ITTs in the 1 hour 15 seconds to 1 hour 30 seconds range, I did an official 40 KM ITT in 58:30.
The back story is that there is a "championship" ITT each year under the auspices of California Bicycle Racing (CBR). For some reason, the timing of this race changes each year. This year it was in April. In 2009 it was in November. This year's event kind of snuck up on me and I registered for the race on the next to last day of registration. On top of that, I hadn't ridden my TT bike in about a month. Fortunately, I had been training pretty well this spring.
The course is the original SoCal district championship TT course: Avenue E in Lancaster which borders the southern edge of Edwards Air Force Base. The course is flat and is an out-and-back, east-west configuration. I started racing on this course in 1980 and it typically has a strong tailwind on the way out (east) and an equally strong headwind on the way back. Race day was fairly typical with the winds being slightly lighter than normal.
I knew the wind was not as strong as usual since I could "only" hold 27-29 MPH on the way out (29-30 mph is usual). At the turnaround I was determined to keep my speed above 20 MPH into the headwind. A motivating factor was a couple of other 50-54 racers passed me and were, shall we say, not really following the rules of an ITT. Anyway, that motivated me even more. I managed to keep my speed above 22 MPH with a couple of peeks at 25 MPH. When I hit the last kilometer I was pretty sure I was going to go under an hour but I still gave it everything I had, crossed the line, and hit my computer.
I was happy.
