2015 Tour de Gruene

November 8, 2015

This is my fourth time to do the Tour de Gruene Team Time Trial. Here is a link to last year’s race, providing a good background about the Tour de Gruene.

The 2015 race differed from past events in two ways. First, at the last minute, race organizers changed the route to adapt to flooding along River Road; instead of being 26 miles, the new route was only 14 miles. Being 12 miles shorter, one might think that would make the race a lot easier. Not true. Yes, it was shorter, but the new route had more climbing, which made it much more difficult to go fast. The new route had almost 1300 ft of climbing (91ft/mi), with maximum incline over 11%. Everyone’s average speed was slower than previous years.

Second, my past race partner, Robert Parker had surgery before the race and had to bow out. Bert Miller from our riding group jumped in at the last minute, racing with the name of Robert Parker. Organizers didn’t know that we’d switched riders. Ssshhhhh. Fortunately, Bert was a great race partner and we had a lot of fun. Be sure to ask him what is UpDoc the next time you see him!

Race day began with clear skies and a beautiful morning. The temperature, in the low 50s, felt much colder due to a strong wind, prompting me to wear my long sleeve jersey and leggings.

Bert and I won our age group category with an official average speed of 19.2mph and an overall time of 43:59. My Garmin indicated that our speed was 19.0mph (max 40.3 mph) with a time of 44:16. The difference lies in keeping the Garmin computer going a while after crossing the finish line. If we had done the 2014 longer route, we had expected to do 22 mph. That speed difference illustrates how much more difficult the 2015 route was compared to the 2014 route.

Although we won our age group, the overall winning speed of 25.8 mph shows the difference between our category speed and those truly fast riders. The winning team rode Aero bikes and included Chris Carlson, a nationally competitive USA Cycling category 1 racer. The fastest Merckx class bike team (standard road bike class which we competed) won with a speed of 21.7mph. Both riders on this team are active USA Cycling racers. Although our time of 19.2mph is not that much slower than the winning time of 21.7mph, approaching that speed on the hills of this route is beyond our reach. Of the 41 men’s Merckx racing teams which included all age groups, we placed 15^thoverall. Not bad!

In a team race, the rider in the lead takes the brunt of the wind force, while the race partner drafts behind. Before the lead rider exhausts, the leader drops back to recover. Partners constantly switch leads throughout the race to maximize overall team speed. In this race I never recovered even when I had been drafting. Throughout the race, I felt tired which is quite unusual. Why? Simple answer: Too many hills that even when drafting behind Bert I was hitting it hard as I could up the hills. Therefore, I never had a break to catch my breath; my heart rate showed it, averaging 182bpm and topping out at 192bpm. That’s a high heart rate and 182 bpm is not something I could sustain for a long ride. Only briefly did I hit a low of 161 bpm, which occurred near the beginning.

It would be fun to race on a truly flat route to see just how fast we could have gone, maybe someday. Far from flat, this race felt more like our weekday hill rides (called “Hills of Terror” rides averaging around 100ft/mi). At least with our Hills of Terror rides we do take time to recover between hills ,but no recovery breaks on this race.

Although this is the first time for Bert to do this particular race, I know he really enjoyed it and was a great partner. We did everything a good race team could or should do to help each other. Lots of fun, thanks Bert.

Below are pictures of the race. Although all these pictures show me in the lead, the truth is that both Bert and I shared the lead equally throughout the race, doing exactly what a good team should do.