YarraTri Richmond Boulevard Time Trial. Oct 24th 2010

Triathletes and cyclists are like oil and water.  They think we're a closed group of snobs, and we don't like their sleeveless tops and viewable arse cracks when they're bent over a TT bike.  Only kidding... they're alright. ;)

Only through a mate I found out that Daniel Podbury (Yarra Triathlon Team Leader) had organised a closed road time trial on the Richmond Boulevard, without the heads up I'd never have known it was on.  25kms, five laps, 10 turnarounds (argh!), but no cars and heaps of people to chase.  We had to submit an estimated time, and I guess I put in the fastest as I was off last of the individual riders.  Number #33.  We were given numbers for both our front and our back, "Mate, if you can see that anytime while I'm racing then I'm not riding my bike properly".  He said just the back one would be fine.  The numbers were only for show, www.eventtiming.com.au were on board and we all issued transponders for 1000's of a second split timing for each lap.

My warm up was nothing special, the legs were still ready to go from yesterdays HCC Club Road Champs.  So I sat and listened to the young HCC juniors have a whinge about the club not having TT helmets for them to use.  I offered them some 'advice' about what I've been provided with from the same club, then asked them who owned the Kurt Kinetic trainers they were just about to warm up on.  The whinging stopped....

As the last of the individual riders I had the teams of four chasing me - the #1 ranked team of TopGear guys looked to be closing on me on lap one.  I was checking my pacing by remembering where we crossed paths each lap on this 2.5km x 10 course.  I righted this by lap two and continued to put more time into them each lap.  A typical time trial involves heading out some country road, turning around, then coming back, the audience is usually sheep, cows, and magpies.  This event was different, we had real people there watching, cheering, and some wondering what we were doing.  We passed the start/finish every 2.5kms and each time my power spiked a little higher, my form was just a little better, and speed was just a little faster.  The lift I got riding through this part of the course was almost like getting free energy to the pedals.

After burning off my excitement energy on the first lap I settled into a good rhythm. 

Lap splits:
1: 6:52.417
2: 7:00.370
3: 7:02.457
4: 7:02.178
5: 7:02.120
Total: 34:59.542 avg 42.8km/h

The power was good, much better than I expected on the TT bike given this was the first ride on it since the Masters Nationals four weeks ago.  With 10 turnarounds the average speed was a little down. My time was enough to win the event by 1min 35seconds.  I'd also kept the teams off my tail with the 1st place TopGear boys averaging 41.1km/h for their 6 laps.

Full Results Here

I dropped off my RFID tag and got an event show bag with about $20 of goodies (gels, bars, drink bottle, etc), nice!  I skipped the free BBQ and massage as we were off for coffee over at the Abbotsford Convent (hah, my spell checker wanted to make "Abbotsford", "Abortionist". Abortionist Convent? Fitting I guess).  There was discussions that HCC may team up with YarraTri to hold more of these in the future, bring it on!