Wednesday Night Timetrial #5 - :08 Worth of Good Luck

Submitted by Mark EWERS on Thu, 05/27/2010 - 11:32am
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Last night's TT was the sixth in the series of 15. It almost wasn't for a couple of reasons.

Reason #1 was the storm that whipped up just as registration was closing. We had just a few waiting in line when a refreshing breeze transformed itself into an arctic blast which would have cleared the registration area, table and all, were it not for 3 or 4 racers grabbing and holding everything down.

The storm set us back about half an hour. When it cleared we had light wind and cooler temperatures. That of course opened the debate about whether conditions were better or worse than earlier, when I'd made my run.

I go off early in order to get a time on the board and to free myself up to volunteer and/or officiate. It's not exactly in accordance with the rules, but really who's going to complain about a 50+ Master running in the Elite 1-3 class?

And that brings me to reason #2. I almost didn't get my own run in last night because of flat #2 for this year. I hope this run of bad luck changes soon. It's been years since I had a flat. Now this year I have 2 so far. I flatted about 3 miles from the start. I figured my day was done because my choices were to walk or to ride the flat tire. I decided to ride it and risk killing an expensive tire rather than walk and risk killing a pair of even more expensive shoes.

Luckily for me, I had an easier time changing the tire than I expected. It must have stretched because getting it on there had been a royal pain. Unluckily for me, the only tube I had was old and very heavy. At least it would be less likely to blow.

The old tube held air, and a quick check of the time told me that if I rode straight out to the start I'd have just enough time to get a run in. Off I went after an aborted warm-up followed by nearly an hour of flat tire downtime.

I ended up 2 seconds off my best time on 5 fewer watts, and that was yet another bit of good luck. While I had about 10% more wind during my run, the warmer air made for lower air density. By my calculations, running before the storm earned me about 8 seconds.