Master Nationals Time Trial

You do have to wonder why we keep going back to this event. I think they could do a watts/kg test on everyone and just hand out the medals. They charge us $85 plus an extra $20 for day-off race number pick-up so we're over $100 to kill ourselves on a course that usually seems better suited for a road bike than a time trial bike. And yet, since 1997, I think I've ridden in nine national championship events, and plan on going to all that I can as long as I can.

Like the local time trial, I go because I want to see where I stand against the top riders and in this case its the best in the country in my age bracket. I've finished as high as 14th and as low as 36th. This year I finished 15th on a course that I finished 21st on in 2009. I think I was the happiest 15th place finsher of the day. It was hot and humid day so I rode a very limited warmup of about 20 minutes and then got in line for my start. After having my bike checked by the officials and once again meeting the morphological exception on my bar length for my long arms (I'm 5-10 but have a 6-4 wing span) I was told to remove my helmet. The official then inspected the inside and pointed out that I had worn through the sticker that designates the helmets approval rating. He said he could technically disqualify the helmet for use, and that I should get a new sticker from LG.

Lots of riders were having problems with the start ramp. The drop was maybe 3' but the ramp was only about 5' in length, same as last year when I almost fell coming out. I was relieved when I made it out without incident and got onto the course and right into the first and longest climb. I paced myself better than last year and once at the top I was able to get right into my tt pace of 26-28 mph on the flats. The rollers to the turn were still slowing me down and at the turn I was around 25.2 mph avg. I was still around that average coming to the downhill to the finish but was able to get my top speed well above 45 mph and ended up with a time 32:28. The winning time was 30:19, and the top ten required better than a 31:37.

It was pretty interesting that USADA was finally on hand to do some drug testing. It'll be interesting to see if anyone failed. I'm not sure why anyone would risk their long-term health to win a fake gold, silver or bronzee medal but they do. I really enjoy competing but it's not worth that risk in my opinion. I'm thinking that I just have to keep going and outlive a lot of the competition. The 80+ bracket only had one rider.