2005 State TT Championships: Flying the Camel
by Rob Schott

report filed 12 June 05

NorCal/Nevada Time Trial Championships
Rick Pepper/Rob Schott
Tandem 90+
1st/ 52:49

I've done this course 5 or so times over the last decade and can't recall a finer day. For those who haven't visited, the course is in an alpine meadow-in a bowl at almost 5000', with snow on the surrounding peaks, about 30 miles north of Truckee. You feel remarkably small standing in the middle of it, dwarfed by nature. It's quieting, peaceful- a quasi religious experience for me, at least for those moments when I'm not on the bike with the snot and sweat pouring off me, chest heaving while trying to beat back the little lactate demons propogating in my legs and clawing up to my dimly-lit brain with their acidy little fingernails.....

I needed a nature recalibration after a toxic 10 day run at work: three call days scattered over a week kept me off the bike for 5 days (probably a good thing coming into a time trial, although it never feels good as it's happening, craving a ride and feeling like your conditioning is evaporating by the minute). I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was in a profoundly irritated state. If I hadn't committed to the tandem, I would not have made the trip, although quite clearly (in retrospect), the right move here is to wipe slate clean with a frenetic waltz through the Republic of Anaerobia.

My partner in this adventure, Rick Pepper, rolled into Sacramento later than planned on Saturday afternoon, leaving not much time to set up the tandem and do a very brief check-out ride. We had never been on a tandem together, and this particular bike is too small for him in the stoker postion (it's for my wife and he has at least 6 inches on her). But we rationalized that this would be more aerodynamic with us seemingly sharing a single seat. It wasn't quite that bad but it was definitely about as snug as two hetero men could get.

Theare are the notorious big seams (crevases?) in the road over the first 5K of the course, which is hard on the equipment (and murderous on your butt as you thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack down the tarmac), so I had my new top 'o the line carbon aero bars installed at a shop. (I rode last year with Linda Elgart on cheapo bars, which by the end of the race had rotated to a useless position just above the front wheel.)

We had a place to stay in Truckee on Saturday night, but we were still tweaking the bike as midnight approached, so we decided to get some sleep and leave early from Sacramento, arriving with enough time to warm up for half an hour and continue tuning our positions until minutes before the start.

We went out too hard- a chronic problem for me, climbing to over 30 MPH into a light headwind, but we quickly throttled back into a more sustainable pace. Rick was calling out the gear changes, squirming around a bit on the back, in and out of the rakes which we had bolted to the rear cowhorn bars- A novel idea which he found effective.

I quickly concluded I was having a rare day, feeling no pain with heart rates that were bobbing around my anaerobic threshold, mostly above. At the end of the race, the inside of my left knee had a large bruise and was bleeding where a patch of skin had been abraded off on some part of the frame- and I didn't notice a thing during the race. I suppose when you're driving a nail into your forehead the pebble in your shoe is less of an issue.

The fist leg was uneventful, trying to find the right cadence, we hit the turnaround and could see we had a big gap on the team that started behind us. And the tandem that had started 2 minutes ahead of us was in our crosshairs. At the time I thought that was the extent of the competition and that we had the district championship sewn up (as it turns out there were 5 teams). We just had to keep the same pace and not have any mechanical problems ...

... Which is when we started having problems. The left stick on the aero bar was working loose- it was rotating and had slipped forward several inches. I studied the near end of the bar, wondering if there was a lip which would prevent it from sliding completely out. No such luck. I couldn't pull it back in, so I opted for light pressure on the bar, hoping it would remain attached. Rick was intermittently yelling at me to find the smooth part of the road- a tandem is hard enough to drive from the aero bars when they're functioning properly and I wasn't doing a particularly good job, using just my right hand.

I thought we'd be slower coming back, but we were above 29 MPH and frequently above 30. We rolled up the tandem that started 2 minutes ahead of us, slowing a bit (Pepper being naturally a bit devious had suggested this approach), recovering a few beats and then blowing by them as hard as we could. We were flying, looking mighty fine, on our way to a good time.... which is when the left half of the aero bar popped out. I was holding onto the damn thing- what to do with it? And where to put my left hand? I was controlling 350 pounds of bike and riders at 31 MPH with one hand (well, at least it was my dominant hand). We started to slow as I contemplated the dilemma- I hadn't said anything to Rick, but detecting our dwindling speed, he yelled at me to downshift, which would have required riding no-handed. I lifted the aero bar out for him to see. This was an expensive piece of equipment and I didn't want to jettison it, so I screamed, "can you stick it in my pocket?" He grabbed it and was tugging around the back of my skinsuit but it was too unwieldy to stow in the small pocket. And my skinsuit size has jumped a size in recent years (today I was wearing a medium and need a large) so there wasn't room for a dollar bill, let alone half an aero bar. He yelled back, "we need to get rid of it!" He added, "we'll find it later!" It's pretty nondescript along much of the course and I didn't have a cyclocomputer to mark our location (just my watch attached sideways to the top tube, reading out heart rate and speed, and Rick had only a heart rate monitor pinned to the back of my skinsuit). We passed a dirt driveway with a ranch in the distance. The sign said, "Happy..." something or other, and he heaved the bar into the ditch. With all of this drama, our speed had dropped to 26 MPH. I've got one hand on the remaining half of the aero bar and the left hand on the hood- a rather cumbersome arrangement, so I decide to try to grip the remaining half of the bar with both hands. It seemed a bit dicey- like flying a Sopwith Camel with a torn wing I supposed (it wanted to roll right) but we were more aero, so I kept a death grip on the stick and avoided the drops. I decided I could drive it well enough to keep the bike on the road (we had less than 8K to go). Our speed picked back up to 30+ MPH.

We zipped across the finish, pleasantly shocked with our time. We couldn't beat the national champs in the next category (Elgart and Humphreys) but we were reasonably close. The sum seemed better than you'd predict from the parts, and although tandem time-trailing is a small niche, a district jersey (for someone who has not previously come close to acquiring one) is a most welcome addition to my wardrobe.

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