After the TT yesterday, Josee had asked me to write a little something for the team’s website. I though, “what can you really say about a TT?” I mean, you suffer for 20km out, pull a U-turn and suffer for 20km more on the way back and call it a day. Anyone who had ridden a time trial knows that’s no secret. I suppose if you’ve never ridden in Beauce then you may not know that some of the roads haven’t aged so well and tend to add a little extra discomfort to go along with the legs and lungs. Actually, that’s no secret either.
I was the 2nd rider off, so I only had 1 guy in front of me to chase and after passing him about 6km in, I was alone in the Beauce countryside. Ok, so that is not exactly true, I did have Steve following behind in the car, as well as in my ear. His advice, time splits and encouragement are all important in a race where even a couple seconds can make a big difference. With no heart rate, speed, power, cadence or even time with me, it can often be difficult to gauge your effort and know how well things are going. A big headwind hit us most of the way out and at times I wondering how well I could possibly be doing when it seemed I was going so slow. This is where having Steve behind again comes into play. Reminders to back off a gear and spin a little more or to shift down and get the speed back up after all the hills helped to keep some in reserve for the ultra fast 2nd part. A time check with 10km to go, let me know that I was going wasn’t going too slow and gave me a little extra motivation to finish it off. Cross the line. Wipe the snot and slobber off of my face. Cool down a little and proceed to wait for every other rider to finish and see how my time would hold up. With strong guys like Wohlberg, Bell, and my teammate Francois Parisien out on the course I knew I could go from best time to 5th, 6th or 7th quite quickly. In the end, I managed to hold all but Svein Tuft off, who narrowly took the win (yeah right) for his 4th National TT title.
The end.
