Race Preview

It’s very different riding a route with a gang of people on a drizzly evening after a couple beers than it is taking it on by yourself in the bright early morning with just coffee in your belly. Plus, doing it on a single-speed running about 62 gear-inches is a wholly other experience than rolling on a 24-speed whose low is no more than 20 gear-inches tops.

That said, it was plenty fun—for me, anyway—to preview the Taco Truck Time Trial route last night for what started out as about 15 riders leaving the “Broken Obelisk”-free Red Square (apparently, it’s been removed for cleaning) but which ended up, after the first taco truck stop, winnowed down to half a dozen.

What I hadn’t realized, riding the route all by my lonesome, was how steep the three steep hills are, a fact which was brought home to me pretty clearly last night by the epithets thrown in my direction by my fellow riders and by the simple fact that I had to get off the Quickbeam and push for each of the post-taco truck climbs.

I still think the fastest riders will probably come in well under 90 minutes, a prospect that makes me worried about how I’ll get from the start to finish in time to record their arrivals, but we’ll see…

I was given a much better idea of how to integrate the Conference Bike into the start than what I was thinking of yesterday. The way it will work, I think, is that every time another seven racers sign in, they will be assigned a group which will then go ride the CoBi around the block; the group’s time will be recorded, and that will set the placements for when each group of seven leaves, spaced 5 minutes apart.

The potential for my messing up timings is huge; this strategy, though, will give me more room for error to err within.