race report by peter.

when you think of a team time trial you think of the old team postal boys in the tour de france.  all power and grace and all working together like a well oiled machine.  and then… there is the wa state champs.  i’m not saying that there were no well oiled machines out there today.  the plan b men’s team smashed the course and looked to be doing it well as they flew along the other side of the road from us.  however, there were a lot of teams that didn’t look too oiled and i am guessing that ours was one of them.

the conditions today were nothing short of atrocious.  the only thing that would make it unbearable would be a lot more rain.  basically the wind was so strong, it tried to blow you off the road at every opportunity.  the closest weather station that i could find on the net was mandurah which reported 61km/h average winds with gust up to 87km/h.  as you expect the coast to be a bit windier, drop about 10km/h of those numbers and you still get crap riding conditions.  what made it worse was the course was three sides of a square, so you didn’t just get a headwind/tailwind combination, but rather a very bad crosswind/headwind/tailwind/crosswind combination.  i know i put crosswind in there twice, but it played such a big part to the day.

so, in the lead up to the event we had a choice to make.  which division would we race under.  as ryan is the only one in our team that does not qualify for masters, it would depend entirely on whether he wanted to race.  in the end it was stu, mark, jerry and i that formed the team and we signed up under the masters 35-49 division. 

the course, as previously mentioned, was loosely the three sides of a square.  see attached.  the first part started straight south before heading in a se direction.  back south again before turning directly west to the turn around and back the way we came.  the course was pretty much flat so was ideal for a team time trial and ideal to get those well oiled machines all working together.  as i said, the wind through all of that out the window.

we were scheduled to start at 09:51 and would be the fourth masters team off.  the open women’s riders would already be on the road before us and the open men would be following behind.  there were only seven masters teams so we only had to beat four teams to get a medal.  the aim was to at least get a medal of any colour. 

as we prepared our gear, the rain began to fall.  hard.  everyone just left the bike against the cars and jumped inside to wait it out.  the rain wasn’t too bad and i could live with it.  after the rain stopped, however, the wind really started to blow.  we kitted up and headed out for a warm-up ride.  in the process of borrowing chris’ ridely road bike, i managed to also get his cosmic carbone deep dish wheels.  being a time trial i decided to give them whirl to try to grab whatever advantage i could.  as mark and i headed out for a warm-up, i decided that i had made the wrong wheel choice.  we got as far down as where the road swings to the south-east and the crosswinds really came into effect.  i found that i was having trouble keeping the bike straight and really had to fight it.  we turned around and made the tailwind assisted run back to the car.  i had bought my real design wheels with me which had a lower profile so swapped out the front wheel to try to gain some control.  during the warm-up we could see lots of guys running full disks on the back and deep dish rims on the front.  i hoped they had better control than me.

our start time approached and we discussed team tactics.  basically we would straight line it doing 30 sec turns on the front.  we would all stay together till the turn around but then could drop a rider on the return as we only needed three to get a finish time.  if anyone got a flat they would be left behind, except if they were the third rider remaining.  all good we thought.  just a matter of staying in formation.

our time came and we got our count down to go.  i was on the front and had trouble clipping it and had to give it a second go before it clicked.  not a good start.  then as we wound up the pace i went to put it in the big ring and it didn’t want to shift up.  not good at all.  it was working fine before, and now i was worrying about a broken cable and whether i could do the whole thing in the small ring.  i eased the pressure off the pedals and tried again.  this time is shifted smoothly, but i really didn’t need the extra stress.

the first couple of k’s down to where the road swung around were ok.  we had a head wind, but you could get a good draft on the wheel in front and we were swapping out turns often enough for everyone to get a rest.  as the road turned, we came up over a railway crossing.  this is where i got my first real fright.  as the bike lifted over the crest of the crossing, a gust came in from the right and gave my bike a thumping.  i now was wishing i had even lower profile wheels on.

this stretch down to the right hand turn was pretty bad.  we managed to organise ourselves so that we echeloned across the road with the lead rider as close to the centreline as they could be.  however, we were still being hit by gusts that would move your bike to the left and everyone had to be extra careful as we were now overlapping about half a bike in order to get a draft.  i found that most of the time i could not actually get down on the tri-bars as it was too unstable in the gusts.  i just grabbed the bullhorns and hung on for grim death.  the wind had also spread lots of dead branches on to the course and we also had to avoid them to save us from getting a puncture. 

we hit the right hand turn at the 10 km mark and i was glad that we now had a headwind.  before we reached the turn we could see two teams in front of us and we knew that we could make up some more ground now.  one was the masters team that started 2 min ahead of us, while the other was one of the women’s teams from about 10 mins earlier.  i looked back and could not see anyone after us so i guessed that we were doing alright.

i was now pulling longer turns at the front as i didn’t have to fight the crosswinds and could get into a better rhythm.  unfortunately this section only lasted for 5 kms and we turned right again to cop the full brunt of the crosswinds. 

the 6 kms along this stretch to the turn around was the worst conditions that i have every ridden in.  i hardly got down on the tri-bars as i found the bike uncontrollable.  and even when i did, i was watching up the road to see where the bushes acting as a wind break finished, so i could get ready for the gusts to hit us again.  most of the time we were riding so close to side by side that we hardly formed a line at all. 

about halfway down this stretch, i noticed my polar speed mount had come loose and was now precariously hanging at the end of my forks against the quick-release lever.  if it swung around it would go straight into my spokes and would probably make quite a mess of either me or the bike.  i kept a watchful eye on it and tried to work out how and when i could rectify the problem.  as we approached the turn around i told mark and he said to sprint ahead so i could fix it without losing the team too much time.  i ended up just stretching it around the skewers as well so the it could move anywhere.  unfortunately it meant that the end of the cable ties was now playing a delightful tune on my spokes as they turned past.  it didn’t matter.  you could hardly hear anything over the wind.

we now had the same problem with the wind but now from the other side for the return trip.  big gusts and hard to hide from it.  being an out and back we also got a view of some of the teams that were in front and behind us.  some were all over the road and others were just powering along.  i was hoping the powerful ones were all in the open men’s division.

about halfway along this stretch, we lost jerry.  he didn’t lose too much ground and he said that he almost made it back on, but the wind was too much and resigned himself to riding home on his own.  he was not he only one to do that today.  up ahead i saw an aussie crates rider who turned out to be steve, who often come out on the sunday ride.  he had been dropped by his team and was now finding his own way home by turning around early.

we took the left hand turn and now had the wind on our backs.  again the turns got longer as without fighting the crosswind, you could spend more energy going forward.  i was very disappointed to come to the end of this stretch.  we turned left again and started to negotiate the last crosswind section. 

i was starting to struggle now and was having trouble holding position in the line.  i couldn’t get on the bars and power along, so didn’t feel like my riding was very fliud.  we echeloned to the right and as you were overtaken you had to swing down and all the way around the others to get back onto the right hand side out of the wind.  we now also had steve and another lost rider hanging onto our draft to help get themselves home.

we battled along, but both those lost riders eventually passed us to act as a carrot for us to chase.  unfortunately, we weren’t that hungry and i think it was actually harder to ride in formation that it was to rode solo.  on your own, if a wind gust hits you, then you can easily just drift across the road and back on track.  in a team time trial, you really needed to control the bike at all times as there was someone relying on your position.

finally the road swung north and we hit the final tailwind stretch for home.  stu and i were stil powering along, but mark was starting to struggle a bit.  i guess this is where the triathlon background of the two of us comes to the fore as mark recognises that it is an area in which he has not done much training.  we powered up to the finish and mark was calling for us to ease off as he was losing the wheel.  we were yelling at him to go harder as it was only the last km and he needed to give it everything.  stu and i rode side by side to try to give him a bigger draft area and we managed to cross the line in 1:08 for the 42 kms.  i was so glad that it was over.  the wind and the openness of the course made it one hell of a tough day.

we waited for jerry to finish before we headed off to the cars.  a team from bikeforce southern river was behind us and a couple of those guys were the ones doing all the work at last weeks cyclo-sporitf race.  they said that they got 1:10 or so, so we knew that we had at least one team down.  three more to get a medal.  we got changed but left the spr gear on just in case we actually reached the podium.  unfortunately the presentations didn’t start till about one o’clock after there was some delays in getting the timing for the juniors organised.  this gave us an opportunity to wander down into pinjarra and grab some food etc before hand.

after a two hour wait we still didn’t know if we got a place or not.  i was already over my expected home time and had to ring and explain that there was a good chance that we got a medal.  i was hoping that we didn’t all just sit around and wait for a fourth place.

in the end our time was good enough for second place and my second state masters silver medal for the year.  we were pretty happy about it but would have a lot of work to do to make up the 6 min the first place guys managed to get.  the first open men’s team managed to clock it in under 1 hr and blitzed the next team by six minutes as well.

steve’s team came in third to get him a bronze medal in the open division, while mel, josie and sarah managed to narrowly hang onto first place by about 10 or 15 sec.  bec’s team took out third in the open women and took home a bronze.

so, a good result for an absolutely awful day on the bike.  we were all pretty happy to get a medal and it made getting out of bed this morning worthwhile.  i doubt we would have made the effort for just a sunday hills ride.