What did we do today? What was it like?
Tour of the Gila Stage 3: the Tyrone Time Trial, which is like sprinting to the
How did I do?
Not terrible actually, I finished 36th, which was something of a shock because only mainlining two Coca Cola Vanilla coffees allowed me to open my eyes this morning.
Quote of the day
“I’m charging his Di2 battery in a burrito shop.”
Peter’s TT bike (which is actually Alex Marr’s TT bike) uses electronic shifting but the battery was dead and it wouldn’t shift, so logically a burrito shop was our only hope.
“Are you glad you drove 6 hours to watch Tyrel go by once?”
Tyrel’s family drove out from Santa Rosa to see him in the least spectator-friendly or interesting form of bike racing.
“What was your time Matti?”
“Yeah Matti, what was your time?”
“When did you start, when did you finish? C’mon did you make time cut?”
“Did you beat George???”
“What was your time what was your time what was your time?”
The entire team at once suddenly seemed way to invested in my time trial mediocrity.
“I don’t know what having an HRV of 18 means but I’ll find out.”
Tyrel, who is a goddamn monster, but even a monster eventually gets tired after seven UCI race days and 10 hours in a van eating dinner off the ground of a gas station.
“How did everyone do today?”
“I beat Tyrel! #godform”
(TT God (Chaz) set the nickname for Tyrel Fuchs to ‘loser of the TT”)
Tyrel normally SMASHES all of us in TTs, but Ethan, Chaz, and I finally beat him today and were just rubbing his face in it.
What I hated/loved about today
I love UCI time trials. Not because I’m good at them, but because since it’s a UCI race every racer has to put their bike on a special jig to make sure it’s not in violation of the UCIs straightforward, common-sense rules for a time trial bike, which never stresses out anyone.
When I rolled up to the time trial parking lot everyone at Rio was running around in a low-key panic. I saw Chaz first.
“What’s going on?”
“None of us passed the jig.”
“Huh? All of us just passed at Redlands.”
“Yeah it’s the same official as Redlands but we’re all off.”
Five minutes later Chaz amputated his mechanical shifters to comply with the rules and raced back to retest the bike in the jig. Then he came back.
“Did it pass?”
“Yeah, by four inches this time.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it turns out the jig wasn’t level or set right so they rebuilt it and my bike passes just fine now.” Chaz looked at his amputated shifter and shrugged.
The UCI jig nightmare didn’t end there though. As I rolled up to do my final check in a dude starting before me raced up, trying to get his TT bike passed. He put it in the jig and the officials were like “lolololo NOPE” and another official said, “Just so you know, you’re starting now, so you better grab a random road bike and get going.”
The guy sprinted back through the jib station, grabbed a road bike, ran to the start line and went off with another rider since his start had already begun and your time begins when your start begins, not when you start.
Brutal.
The Tyrone Time trial is straightforward – kill yourself on all the two hills on the course and then get up to speed and get as aero as possible in the downhills.
The first hill is the longest hill, and about three-quarters of the way up it, some dude named Voegel with veiny legs the size of a telephone pole blew by me perfectly aero like I was standing still.
This always happens to me during this Time trial. There’s always some dude with a terrible GC position (we start in reverse GC order) who is a goddamn monster but a terrible position overall because unlike me, they’re working for someone else on their team and spend their entire day pulling the entire field at 26 miles an hour until the final hill where they pull off and let their teammate do their thing.
So, that’s demoralizing. But unlike other time trials, he was the only one on the course that passed me so I wasn’t that tempted to do an aero tuck into the ditch because I was sucking so hard.
Dat ass inspired me. I think next year I’m just going to lift and do all my rides on a TT bike, grow the glutes, and get good at putting out power with my head up nestled just above my crotch instead of trying to be good at anything else.
At Peabody park, easily the best kid’s park in Silver City, I kicked it with my girl and boy. Hadley wanted to play ‘restaurant’ so Lars and I sat in a makeshift kitchen and ordered imaginary items from her. Lars ordered two vanilla milkshakes, suddenly announced he had a bad tummy ache, and then ducked underneath the table, dropped his drawers, peed all over my leg, and then whipped his shorts back up and said, ‘Ta-Dah!!!”
My wife ran into one of the race organizers that’s been doing the Tour of the Gila for 30 years. She mentioned that she heard it might be the last running of the race and the guy nodded and said, “Yeah, maybe. I think for sure we’ll bring it back in some form, but we might stop putting on the UCI race. Some of the pros are kind of mean. He didn’t say mean.
It’s really surprising to me that the promoter said that because pros in my experience tend to be the most grateful, kind, friendly, outgoing, approachable, down-to-earth people you’ve ever met.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Road cycling is dying in America. There are a lot of reasons for that, but we as a group could really help our cause by not being asses to the communities that go all out to make it possible for us to wear tight clothing and race around in circles.
I mean, how hard is it to wave, to be nice, to patronize some local businesses and give back a bit. I don’t care how fast you are – at the end of the day you’re just pedaling a bike, not curing cancer, so the whole sneering, shitty elite roadie isn’t just offputting, it’s kinda pathetic.
I’ve spent years failing badly at bikes so you don’t have to. I have a mortgage, two kids, a wife, a dog that doesn’t listen, a weakness for Miller Lite, and fish frys – but I can still turn a pedal if I have to. Chances are we’ll get along just fine.
C’mon now – let’s get fast together!
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