Working Man Stage Race: Stage One - Time Trial

David, Mike, Myself lined up at the start (photo credit two adventures)

Took the day off from work to get ready for stage one of WMSR. My plane didn’tget in until way later than it should have, and I didn’t make it to bed till 4AM. It was nice to be able to sleep to noon and get my stuff together.

Not a whole lot to say about the time trial. I came in 52 out of 57, finishing the ~6.25 miles in 16:53 @ ~22.2 mph, about 2:30 back from the leaders. There was a ridiculous amount of aero gear at the event, especially in the masters field. As a guess, 95% had aero bars, 75% aero helmets, 66% deep dish rims, maybe 10% disc wheels. I’d really like to try it again with some aero bars at least, maybe I could have finished somewhere in the middle that way, who knows. All I know is that I got a measely 24/100 points for the stage which puts me so far out of the GC it’s ridiculous.

The course itself was a lot of fun, and time trialing was overall a lot more fun than I thought it would be. There were some pretty technical turns and it was tricky judging how much to slow down. There was one hill of any real size about a mile out from the finish. It was just a little bit longer than the other rollers in the race and I may have gone just a little too deep into the red there. I was cranking my 53x19 over painfully slowly, 60 rpm tops, and couldn’t get it going too quickly over the flatish part to the top. Teammate Mike Rowell was staged 30 seconds behind me and blew by me a mile into the race like I wasn’t even moving. He finished 6^th for the cat 4’s. TPM had a big first-ever time trial for him, finishing 3^rd in 14:23.

Stage two tonight is a 35-mile circuit race. My legs feel good and fresh today, and I’m hoping to hang in there and be around for the sprint to the finish.