It really isn't all that often one has the chance to compete in a team time trial. The smoothest way to ride one is to practice with your teammates a fair bit so everyone is comfortable with each other and riding close on a wheel while stretched out in an aero position. (There is a reason aero bars are not permitted in mass start events!)
Our Central coach, Andrew Ross, arranged for a team time trial practice before the games. Most of the team was able to make it out, and we all went in one big group. The advantage of a large group is more rest. The disadvantage is we varied widely in strength and comfort riding close on wheels and that made it very difficult to ride smoothly. But we got the chance to see how it felt.
Satruday after the crit we had a team meeting and talked a bit about the TTT - and the men were divied up into their two teams. Poor guys had it rough - most regions fielded 10 men and thus had two teams of 5. We only had 8 and thus we could either field one 5 man team that was equal in numbers and one 3 man team (at a huge disadvantage in the numbers game but also dangerous should one man have a mechanical because for the men the clock stopped after the 3rd rider crossed the line). Or, we could field two teams four. They decided two teams of 4 was the safest and strongest bet. For the women there were no decisions to make - we had a full compliment with three of us and the clock stopped on the second rider. We did discuss some strategy for how to play it because Vanessa and I were fairly equally matched on flats and Heather was newer to the sport and was really nervous about riding fast in a tight paceline.
Sunday morning we got out there fairly early and the three of us ladies decided to work on our paceline technique and try out different speeds. Our goal was to ride at Heather's threshold for as long as she could hold on and then have the remaining two kick it up as high as we could go for the whatever distance was left of the 20 or so miles. We did our "slow" work on a side road and our "at speed" work on the course, working in a few turns to get the feel of those when trying to keep our line tight. The course was pretty much hot dog shaped - two parallel roads with several connectors. We went up one, crossed to the other on the connector and back down the other. We started in the middle of the hotdog, and did two complete laps so we had 4 turns to maneuver. The turns felt a bit tighter than the curves on a 400 meter track, but not quite as tight as on a 200 meter track. On a regular bike it was possible to peddal through the turns. Time trial bikes handle differently though and feel much less stable in the curves. We finished our warm up and found the start with 5 - 10 minutes to spare. The men started half a lap away from the finish (and women's start) and were doing 3.5 laps to our 2. The first women's team to start (Adirondack) was going to go off a minute after the last men's B team went by the finish.
Adirondack went off. Then NY. We were the 3rd out of 4 teams to start (Western only had one woman, and Hudson Valley didn't have any). We were glad to be done waiting - the nerves are always worst while waiting and they tend to decrease dramatically as soon as the pedals start turning. We had a smooth gradual increase in pace that allowed everyone to clip in and line up according to our preplanned order. Then it was head down and ride. We negotiated the first turn and were coming back into the headwind at mile 6 or so. Heather was feeling the strain and was debating when to pull out and say "Go!" when we passed someone at the side of the road in a Central jersey with what looked like a bloody face. I couldn't tell who it was (didn't see his bike) but it was definitely one of our guys. That sobered all of us up and Heather decided that she could not focus on riding close on someone's wheel while in areo bars after seeing that when she was so winded, so she told us to go for it. Heather kept riding in case one of us had a mechanical and her time would be needed to stop the clock. Vanessa and I continued to put our heads down and do the work. We all three of us left everything out on that course. Vanessa and I kicked it up to 30 for the flat spint across the line and we finished right together.
The Adirondack coach saw us out there riding and he told us he was hurting just watching us bury ourselves out there. He gave us kudos for putting so much effort in. Despite that effort, we were 20 seconds out of first place and took the silver. Adirondack had a great team this year and really cleaned up.
20 seconds!!! Over just 22 miles!!! Aaaargh!! So close and yet so far. As is typical with these things you spend way too much post race energy trying to determine just where those 20 seconds could have been made up. In our case I think it was the corners. We were coasting in and out of them and had we been able to pedal out and not lose quite as much momentum on them we could have made up that time. However, if we had pushed the envelope too much in those corners, a fall would have been a lot slower than coasting in and out. Everywhere else on the course we were really giving it our all.
Results are up at the Empire State Games website.
I have found several photographs of the cycling events they are at:
Drew Zinck Photography
Py's digital trail and road eyes
FlickRiver and
Terry Wherry
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