019: math geeks

So sometime last year a discovered a new part of the game which I have grown to love. Time Trialing.

I mean, I don’t love it the way I love cross, but there is something special about time trialing, I like to think of it as cycling’s dorky little math nerd brother.

Cycling is largely a game numbers. Weight to power ratios, heart rate zones, power outputs. At it’s purest form time trialing is simply how much power can you put down for a given distance, for a given time.

The beauty of this game is that is gives you a stake in the ground, it gives you solid baseline and a comparison of where you are fitness wise. Take for instance the cape may TT I did in 2008. 10 miles 17:45. A year later, I’ve been working on my positioning, and TT efforts, and I did the exact same course in pretty much same condition in 16:30. Sweet.

The other beauty of the numbers is that it gives you an immediate gauge of where you stack up in the world. The numbers they don’t lie. 40k in sub hour, is good. It's a standard for the working class joe. But let's take a look at the master’s national championship results for this year. That race was a 25k time trial. Go with me here, My 59:59 equals about 20k in 30 minutes; I would have had 5 more km to finish up. Feldman did 29:43 for 25k. Ouch. Let’s make it even worse Cancellera in the 45k worlds race in 2007, did it in 55:41. I suck. The numbers don’t lie…

If cyclocross is bike racing in it’s purest form, in my opinion, TTing is the farthest from that, if not for pinning on, or gluing on a number I might not call it racing at all. Rarely when I do a TT I rarely get nervous like I do for a cross race or team mtb race. It’s all empirical, you go out and ride by yourself and suffer in solitude. You push yourself as hard as you can, there is no soft pedal or as far as I can tell too much tactical in a tt. You go out put down your best effort. At the end of the day, yeah they rank the times, but often my goal regarding time is set before the race, and I find myself satisfied regardless of how I ended up ranked, if the time fell where I wanted…

I will admit, the culture at a time trial is nothing like a cross race. As a spectator it’s like watching paint dry. The racers range from guys who would never dream of entering a mass start event, to the beautiful minds...

I imagine these guys being the guys that look at a page of numbers and see a pattern, That can read binary code just looking at it. Geeky, but wicked fast...

I’m not busting these guys, they are freakin’ amazing; truth is I wish I could be one of them, on some level I always admired math guys, the super smart, but me, I ain’t that bright, liberal arts major, and my math classes were really low level. Y=mx+b was as far as I got.

Nope, it’s not cross, it’s probably the farthest thing from cross, but it’s the truth, it’s a lot of suffering crammed into a short space, and man I kinda dig it.

This my attempt at buying speed. Not a part on the bike less than 7 years old. wheels have both been raced in cross; cross bikes weigh less, but i do love this sick monster.

pizza and beer were good tonight.

respect.
fatmarc

"For sure I’m going to get arsy at some riders, because, you know, I’m an asshole," said Cavendish. "But it’s irrelevant their nationality, and irrelevant what they look like, or where they come from. Because, like I said, I’m an asshole"