2012 Elite, U23, Juniors & Paralympic Road National Championships – Day 2

Originally posted 6/21/2012

Today (6/21/12) was Day 2 of our trip to the 2012 Elite, U23, Juniors & Paralympic Road National Championships.  Today’s event was the Time Trial National Championship.

Chester and I didn’t start until 3:15 so we were able to sleep in – until about 7:15…which was late for me.  We got up and had breakfast, ran an errand and then came back to the hotel room.  Our plan was to stay cool, get hydrated and then to get to the venue around 1pm to get our race numbers, check out the start and warm up. 

We were fortunate that there was a road with a solid hill in it to warm up. I’ve found this kind of warm up works the best for me.  We were on the bike at 2:15 and rode until 3:55.  At 3:55 we entered ‘the pit’ to have our bike inspected by USA Cycling (Once in ‘the pit’, you can’t leave).

We started our race right on time.  We had spoken to a couple competitors beforehand and all we knew about the course was that the course was rolling.  But not knowing what was coming was going to be tricky.

Each tandem started at 30 second intervals.  We were the third tandem to start. The start went straight across a dam for almost 3/4 of a mile.  Chester and I started smoothly and quickly got up to speed.  Thankfully the course was straight enough t hat we could see the two tandems in front of us and use them as rabbits.

At the end of the dam, we hit the first roller and we stayed in sync up the hill.  My only worry was that my heart rate was already in the 170s.  I’m figuring the reason for my high heart rate was the temperature, which was in the 90s.  Chester wasn’t complaining so we kept the hammer down.

We caught the first tandem about 4 miles into the course.  I was pretty surprised with the rollers.  It didn’t seem we had any chance to recover.  After we passed the first tandem, I felt like we were gaining on the remaining tandem in front of us.  But we didn’t make any real ground until we reached the hill leading up to the turnaround point.

Chester and I made it through the turn around ok. I overestimated our turning radius of the tandem and we went through the grass before we were able to get back on the road and up to speed.  Once we were up to speed I was able to see our chasers.  We had a decent lead on the tandems that started behind us. I was hoping we could hold them all off until the finish.

We caught the tandem in front of us about a mile after the turn around while going up a hill.  Chester and I were working well together and keeping our speed up. We were going as hard as we could.

At 21:45 into our race, we were passed by the strongest tandem team.  Dave and Clark rolled by us and looked very powerful.  Chester said to ‘go get them’ but we were pretty cooked.  We started the long finish over the dam and it seemed to take forever.  I was going as hard as I could and would later learn Chester was too.  We were able to keep the winning tandem in sight at the finish. 

We finished in 26:24 which was about 2.5 minutes behind the winners and 40 seconds behind second place.  Considering that this was our 4th ride together on a tandem, we are pretty stoked to finish in 3rd place!  To put this in perspective, the winning team has been riding together since 2007!

Chester and I had a great day!  We get to relax tomorrow and get ready for our 50 mile Road Race on Saturday.  Hopefully we can be just as successful!

Below is my Garmin Download from today’s Time Trial. Check out the Avg Heart Rate!