Another Win! P/1/2 Folsom ITT Race Report

Rand scored his first win of the season after being oh-so-close on many occasions. Congratulations to Rand on a great ride. Below is his report from the Folsom TT.

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Folsom South Canal ITT
Folsom, CA
9/12/2008
Weather: windy, hot
Place: 1st of ~15

In order to get my legs primed for the crazy SF Twilight crit on Saturday, I snuck out of work on Friday to go race the first stage of the Folsom Omnium, a 10-mile out and back ITT along a canal in Folsom.

This is definitely my new favorite ITT course...not hard to do, since ITT courses are pretty much always flat and straight, but still worth noting. The course was run on a bike path at the bottom of an irrigation canal, so the majority of the path is below ground level. This lends a "wind tunnel" quality to the course and led to a stiff headwind on the way out. Finally, the course is punctuated by three steep, short climbs (probably about 30 feet high, 15% grade or something), which required a quick burst of power to get up and some serious willpower to accelerate over the top. They felt like speedbumps on the way out, and like the Galibier on the way home.

My start time was around 4pm, so I knew it was going to be really hot. I wanted to make sure I stayed hydrated and cool so I brought a huge bag of ice, and stuffed it into my skinsuit as I warmed up. This enabled me to perform a very good leg warmup without overheating my body (this is a trick Garmin-Chipotle has been doing this year), and kept my core temperature way down all the way until the start.

I started the TT pretty quickly, and pushed to the limit early on. I tried to keep the cadence high over the climbs, and it allowed me to quickly ramp back up to speed over the crests. I caught my 30-second man right at the turnaround after fighting the headwind, then stuck it in an overly large gear and used the tailwind to keep the speed high. On the way back, it was all I could do to keep from stalling at the tops of the climbs. I definitely wish I had a little more in the tank for accelerating down the back of the hills on the way back, because I definitely lost some time there. Anyway, a brutal push through the flat last 1k got me to the line in 21:15, at an average speed of 28.23mph.

That was enough to give me the victory, and the next few placings were something like 10-15 seconds back.

Finally, I got the ever-elusive win, and although its not nearly as sexy as a mass-start win, I'll take what I can get!

Thanks for reading,
Rand