Our man David Stephens sends this report:
On Saturday, Tripleshot Cycling put on the BC Time Trial Championships in Cowichan Valley on the Island. It had looked like there would be no provincial TT champs this year, but at the last minute, Tripleshot came through and put on the event in conjunction with the BC Masters championships.
With what appeared to be no TT’s on the horizon, I put away the TT bike after Banff Bike Fest in mid-June, so I had a couple weeks after the announcement that the race was on to get re-acquainted with being folded into an uncomfortable position for 40k and still maintain power. I hit up my favourite TT training location — the only place you can ride for longer than 10k with no traffic lights in Vancouver — the road out to Iona Beach. The TT form came back slowly, culminating with a strong set of V02 max intervals and a 15km tune-up race the week before the championships.
The course was a non-traditional championship course, with nearly 500m of climbing in the 40km race. The first 10km were uphill, the next 20km were rolling and the last 10km was mostly downhill. Pacing would be difficult, with the ideal pacing strategy would involve riding harder than threshold for the first 10km, holding threshold as best as possible for the next 20km, and then getting aero and spinning the legs quickly on the downhill at the end — i.e.: go hard, then hold on for dear life.
With Christian Meier entered (United Heatlhcare Pro Cycling, 2nd place to Svein Tuft at Nationals) and starting two minutes behind me, I had some serious motivation to start the race too hard, but I tried to hold back and ride just above threshold. The first 10km went to plan, but the heat and rolling hills in the second 10km were taking their toll and I was convinced I was riding too slowly. I got a motivation boost at the turn-around when I saw that Christian had only put 35 seconds into me. On the way back I drove it as hard as I could on the hills and did my best Dave Zabriskie impression on the descents to keep the speed high while recovering.
After the race, everyone I talked to had the same feeling about the course — the heat, hills and pacing strategy made it hard on everyone. Christian won (no surprise there), I came second and Dave Vukets of Trek Red Truck finished third. Overall, happy with my ride and looking forward to trying to go one better next year.
Stephens silver, Vukets bronze, Meier Gold (not pictured).
