So I have now done my first OCA official, fully sanctioned Individual Time Trial, complete with measurements of the bike and everything - even an entry fee.
The ITT itself was on a very pleasant and scenic road through central Ontario, in fact I'll draw the route on Bikely. Or just look below.
Actually the 180 degree turn was a little further along, because the route worked out to about 37 or 38km. Now with the exception of the turn itself the route was very nice, quite flat, just a few 4% climbs nothing more than perhaps 10 or 15m of elevation change and by in large the roads were in reasonable condition. The turn was 180 degrees on a country road that was hardly wide enough to turn with a TT bike, had I been on a road bike I would have been laughing, but hey one technical turn in 35 kilometers, not bad.
Prior to the event I learned a valuable lesson, well two actually.
1. Before putting on bike shoes, use the washroom and then do the paper work then get ready (ended up needing to ride out to a quite area, not easy to find when everyone is warming up, to have a natural break... oops.)
2. In an ITT know the rules of bike sizes, I was okay there, but I actually was overly paranoid, the UCI rule states, the nose of the saddle must come no further forward than 5cm behind a line that extends through the centre of the bottom bracket - I can move my saddle forward almost 4cm - ooops! (I wonder, how much a saddle move would help my time, I suspect on a one hour circuit, probably three or four minutes!) On the other hand my bars extend too far, but I cannot do anything about that, I'm too big, the rule is the ends of the bars (excluding the moving parts of the shift levers) must not go past 75cm in front of the same line that goes through the bottom bracket. Because of my height I get an exemption, which is, if the rider's elbows form less than 120 degrees when on the saddle and reach the end of the bars the bars may extend as far as 80cm from our line but no further. In my case the bars extend out to about 76cm - oh well.
Anyway this might be my first OCA ITT, but it is a far cry from a first ITT, nonetheless I still felt horribly unstable at the start and did not get my foot clipped in until about 10m out, a minor loss, I can live with (perhaps 1 second was added to my time.) I think at the previous ITT the guy who 'launched' me had a better grip so I was able to properly clip in.
For some reason, soon to be investigated when I went to move from the 42 to the 55 ring (from the small to big chain ring) the first time I tried the chain stayed on 42. Now I should insert that originally I had Specialized S-Works chain rings, and those damned things were so flexible every time I would try to upshift the ring would flop out of the way and the chain would land back on the 39 ring (the S-Works rings were 53/39). I replaced the S-Works ring with a regular... well huge Dura-Ace 55/42 ring. Ever since Dura-Ace was installed the problem of the flopping chain ring has gone away, until the ITT, a second attempt at an upshift worked and I was off, loss of time, I'd guess around 3 or 4 seconds.
Sadly, for me, the guy right in front of me never showed up, so I did not have a rabbit to chase down. After about 8km, my usual ITT distance I started hurting and a guy from the Lapdogs started passing me. I put the hammer down hard and put mister Lapdog behind me, a little later he would catch up again and I would have to hammer hard again, after about 25km of cat and mouse with the guy from the Lapdogs he finally got ahead of me and I just could not snap up the distance. He probably finished about 5 seconds before me, but started 30 or more seconds after me.
I read that last paragraph, and think to myself, I'm a dick! I mean, who cares how I did relative to the guy behind me, this was an ITT, as in Individual Time Trial, and I shouldn't worry about Mister Lapdog, I should worry about Mister Michael, who by the way had gone in with a goal (not previously posted) of doing an approximately 40km ITT in under one hour, and for that I can be very happy to report (from the OCA website):
Bib: 83, Name: COLE Michael, Team: Beaches Cycling Club, Cat: RME.4, Time: 0h 58m 33s, Gap 4m 51.59s.
I wonder, if the saddle had been adjusted right, (oh yeah, and if I had not been biking to Rochester NY not 168 hours earlier) would I have trimmed 4 minutes and 52 seconds off my time? I doubt it, but maybe. Oh right, no more dickishness, I promise.
In short I'm happy, I hurt, I felt like I could not go any faster and I did something pretty damn remarkable, I did a 38km ITT in under an hour.
Now time to clean a bike.
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