6/3/03 by George Liolios
Writing a race report about a time trial has to be ranked right up there with watching the grass grow. This is the second year that Tym Tyler has used this venue in Granville, Ohio. The course is tuff with two good climbs and a whole lot of rollers! Not your typical built for speed USA type time trial. As Tym would say, "This is a Euro TT".
To add to the difficulty the temperature was a balmy 45f with an extra dose of blustery wind! I may have been pumped for the race because I messed up my warm-up a bit, going too hard too soon resulting in a stitch in my left side. My bad! After a last minute good luck kiss from Joanne (she loves me) I rolled to the start tent.
I started my watch on my minuteman, was held at 30 seconds and off at zero. The good news about humans is that we quickly block out the memory of pain. At work we refer to pain as discomfort, but a well-ridden time trial is about PAIN, or as a friend once told me, "To be successful you have to suffer well". Within 3 minutes I was definitely "Suffering Well". Time trials do suck which is probably why most riders would rather see their dentist then ride a TT. At about 5 miles my stitch was back, which I just ignored as I brought my breathing under control.
The first 12-15 miles of this 18-mile circuit seemed to be into the wind, but who knows, I may have been delirious. About 5 miles from the finish there is a major down hill, the kind that you yell, "Yahoo", as you descend if your not time trialing. A few of the riders mentioned their nervousness about the descent because of the stiff cross winds and such, but I'm old and dumb and stayed in the tuck until the 90 degree right hand turn at the bottom. Sometime after the descent I passed my 1 minute man, 2 minute man and 3 minute man, but I wasn't sure if I was fast, they were slow or a combination of both.
At about 3 miles to go we had a final nifty climb, a gradual descent followed by gradual accent to the finish. God bless Tym, the finish is in a parking lot with a 90-degree right followed by a 90 degree left with in 20 yards of each other and then the finish.
Overall I finished 16th out of 80 and 1st in the old guys age group. Basically I would say time trials are about suffering and it's safe to say that they suck, but I love em!