“Rides #52 and #56: Time Trial (Plus)”

Yes, you read that right. I was in a time trial! Two of them now, in fact.

Last Week

Last Thursday, the week after the PMC, I asked Rick Ely at Mystic Cycle if there were any more "regular" (as in, regularly occuring) group rides in the area besides the Tuesday night hillfest. He could only think of one, a ride that starts at 5:30 AM every day in downtown Mystic. Ugh.

That afternoon, I was fairly wipped from a long ride the day before so I decided to just go out for some goofing around on the bike, nothing serious. I went through Old Mystic and blitzed up the very steep (but not terribly long) hill at the start Pequot Trail, for the first time this year. After the hill I was just noodling along (as I had no energy for anything else), when I saw a couple riders ahead of me make a left.

I picked it up a little and caught them. One was dressed in TT gear, with the teardrop helmet and skinsuit, and he even had the aero-booties over his shoes. ;-) There were a couple more riders up ahead of these two, so I asked Mr. TT, "What's goin on?" He responded with, "Hi."

He obviously thought I was just saying hello, so I rode up and asked the next guy, "What's going on?" He responded, "Hey, how you doin'?"

This was getting frustrating, but when we turned the next corner, there were about 25 more riders all bunched up along the sides of the road, off their bikes. As I rode by, I asked them, "What's going on?" and I got a few responses like, "Hey!" and "Nice day, isn't it?" and "Hi there."

OK, I get it. They obviously think I'm here for whatever they're doing, so nobody's taking my question literally. Mr. TT had passed me again, so I caught him and explained that I didn't know anything about this event, and really wanted to know WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON!? He laughed now that he finally understood, an explained that it's a weekly time trial run by the Pequot Cyclists.

I stopped and signed up. Why not? So what if I was still recovering from the PMC, and had just wasted most of my energy on that hill? This wasn't a serious event, and just a few hours before I had asked Rick about other organized rides. How could I "walk" away from one that seemed to fall into my lap this way? The entry fee was just $5... for the entire year (June through August). There were only TT's left, but I didn't care. I didn't have the $5 with me, either, but they said as long as I filled out the paperwork I could pay them the $5 next week (which, actually, was this week, since I'm telling this story a week late).

It's a short course, just 10 kilometers (6.28 miles), but it's not flat by any stretch of the imagination. Other than the hills, they did a nice job laying it out, as all the turns are to the right.

That first week, I came in tenth, at 17' 45.04". Eh, not great. I did get to see a new "course record" set by Larry Orlando, though, at 14' 19.05".

Stats: 20.3 miles (32.68 km) in 59' 48" for an average speed of 20.36 mph (32.79 kph).

This Week

This week I was feeling better, but blew it by leaving late. I had to "race" all the way to the start! That probably cost me at least ten or fifteen seconds, and I arrived after the TT had started. (Riders start every 30 seconds, and there were still at least fifteen ahead of me when I got there, but if I had left ten minutes earlier I could have saved a lot of energy.) I finished eighth, in 17' 39.76", about 5.5 seconds faster than last week.

After the race I was completely toasted, so my stats for the day are just average (as I still had to ride home).

Stats: 30.31 miles (48.79 km) in 1h 36' 2" for an average speed of 18.93 mph (30.48 kph).