Nothing But Pinc: River Road and TT mode at Tour De Gruene

Start house!

The last time I pinned a number to a skin suit in the month of November was back in 2011. Why would I do such a thing? In a time of the year that is usually accompanied with leisure from travel and time with school, I suddenly found myself prepping a timetrial bike. The reason I would do such a thing is because of a promise. A promise of fun and memories guaranteed by Jason Bently. I fell for this back in 2011 and I fell for it again in 2013. The event is the Tour de Gruene team time trial. This is an approximately 26 mile 2 man team time trial that takes place throughout beautiful parts of New Braunfels as well as Gruene Texas. After months of persuasion from Jason starting in September, I finally agreed to race with him again.

Back in 2011 we had a great time. We ended up walking away with the second fastest time of the day as well as well as pride to say that even at the beginning of November we still had some form leftover from the months prior.

This year I was going to meet Bently and his family at Tombass Park near my house where I will then carpool with them for the rest of the trip. I was not feeling too good that morning. I ended up being up way later then I wanted to be doing Homework and prepping my TT rig for the first time since Cascade. I was barely able to peel myself out of my bed. My hidden angel would end up being that daylight savings ended earlier that night giving me a much needed extra hour of sleep. I quickly scrambled up and down my stairs grabbing everything that I would end up needing to go fast in a timetrial. I ran through my checklist of a bike, shoes, skinsuit, TT helmet and my determination.

The drive to Gruene was a quick one. I slept a good three quarters of the ride listening to my music and just trying to catch up on some sleep that was much needed. I have been studying for almost 3 weeks straight for each of the 3 exams in my 3 hardest classes which have found themselves all 1 week apart from each other. When we pulled up to Gruene we did not see one biker. I tell Bently that I think they moved the start to a different location. He quickly pulls out a flyer and starts to read it. He lets me know that they moved it 10 miles down the road. We quickly start heading to the new location. I look at the clock and we were 55 minutes away from our TT start time. As we found the parking We quickly got out and scrambled to find our numbers and packets. We quickly got all of our things together and started prepping our bikes. We had only 25 minutes to pin, pump wheels and make sure everything works. However I have been in closer pinches and kept telling myself there was plenty of time.

We rolled up to the start house with just 3 minutes to spare. I told Jason I wanted him to take the first pull and get our momentum going. He agrees with me and gets his wheel slightly infront of mine in the start gate. I greeted the wonderful Cyndi Smith who was giving us our last second instructions and countdown.

As we jumped off the ramp I quickly got on Jason’s wheel and we were off. I got in my TT position for the first time since July and felt an odd feeling of being comfortable on a TT bike. Jason and I had no plan for when it came to pulling. We just pulled from anywhere from around 30 seconds to a minute at a time for the first couple miles. While we were on river road we only had one mishap where a car got infront of us in technical water crossing, which made us, have to slow our speed. My guess would be that it might have cost us 10 seconds maximum. As we progressed through the course we were slowly past by Team Brant. Which consisted of Brant Speed and Kevin Livingston.

It was not till we hit the hills that we started to lose tremendous amounts of time. I had to slow down as my natural climbing ability started to kick in. Jason who is a fellow Houston racer, has an allergy to elevation gain and kept telling me to slow down. Since it was a team time trial I had no choice but to find a pace that we could both ride at. I looked up the road to see the teams we were about to catch slowly ride away from us in the hilly section. As we finally made it to the highway we were then past by a second team. I wanted to keep them in my sights but the variable terrain prevented me from going full gas. It was not until the final 4 miles Jason got his second wind and started throwing in some massive pulls to get us to the finish line as quickly as possible.

Coming in hot to the finish

Once we crossed the finish line I felt a moment of relief, we did it. We were able to circumnavigate river road without any accidents as well as put in a solid time of just over an hour and 3 minutes. Once the results came out I found out that we had the 6^th fastest time of the day. Not too bad considering I have not ridden in a month and could not get in the warmup or prep work that I would have preferred.

The biggest bummer for this race is that they did not have the results at Gruene hall like they have in years past. Other then that this was again a beautiful race that was visited by some great weather. Gruene will probably be the last time I pin a number to my body for the rest of 2013. But it also marks a time in the calender where I will start riding consistently again and prepare myself for the 2014 season. A season where I plan to only grow more as a racer and person.