Public Holiday Monday GITT

What is a GITT I hear you ask. A GITT is a Guerrilla Individual Time Trial. If anyone asks, it is just a timed training ride. There is no road approval. There are no marshalls. It is just you, your bike and your stop watch. What differentiates it from a normal training ride is that there is a group of you all trying to smash each other like it was a proper race!!

So that is how I spent my public holiday Monday. There were 4 of us, all keen to set a mark for a time trial along Lake George. The start was down the hill from the lookout- although I did suggest that a 200m start ramp would be kind of fun!- and the finish was 20km down the road, just before Collector. About 2km from the Pie Shop- very important to remember!

Lake George- earlier in the year.

With the amount of wind around (btw, it has been an incredibly windy winter so far), I decided to race in the raw, ie with training wheels etc, not me naked- it is winter remember :p

Simon set of first as this is was brilliant idea. He claimed he was only going to be putting in about 85% (I think most guys say this when they are racing a girl, although most wait until after the race to make such claims so maybe Simon was telling the truth ;) ). I gave him about 45 seconds and headed off. Steve came after me on his maiden ride on his newly acquired TT rig, which was decked out in full carbon bling- disc and tri-spoke. Then Oliver, who was the rawest of all on his roadie.

The problem with "racing" like this is that there is no way of controlling cars on the course. I had two cars in the brake down lane to dodge, actually it was 3 if you count the car that the policeman had pulled over! It is difficult to maintain momentum when you are trying to look behind at a highway with cars travelling at 110ph to see if there was gap to slip into! Not to worry, I don't think it really cost me too much time and I know that we all had to get around the policeman.

For the first half we had a cracking tail wind and I was cruising along at about 50kph without too much trouble. As we got further along the lake, the wind started to move around to be more crosswind and then head-cross for the last bit. I was having trouble holding my bike upright at times and I remember thinking it must have been incredibly difficult for Steve with his disc.

If you are unfamiliar with Lake George, it is pancake flat. Apparently there is 38m of climbing in total! You can see it all here. And it is absolutely perfect for cracking times, including girls beating boys!

Story of the day, I won by 2 seconds! With a time of 26'46 for the ~20km course. My computer told me that was close to an average of 46kph! I reckon I might have even gone a bit faster if my legs hadn't been screaming from 3 pretty heavy training days before hand!

The Daily Pie in Collector was tops! The coffee went down a treat and the cakes and pies were pretty good too!

After the pause, back on the bikes to roll back to the lookout to the cars in full TTT formation. It wasn't until we got to the top that I realised I actually had a slow leak in my rear tyre. I wonder if that had been there from the start...

Happy TTers at the Daily Pie in Collector! (Photo thanks to Simon.)

You can also read Simon's write up here

Dear Brain, shut up!

The following is "borrowed" from Daniel Gilbert's blog

One of the ironies of human psychology is that desperately wanting something can make attaining that thing all the more difficult. When stakes go up, performance often goes down. In one study, subjects practiced sinking a putt and got better as they went along — better, that is, until the experimenter offered them a cash reward for their next shot, at which point their performance took a nosedive.

This is because we pay close attention to what we’re doing when what we’re doing matters, and though close attention is helpful when our task is novel or complex, it is positively destructive when our task is simple and well practiced. Golfers in another study were told either to take their time and think about their stroke or to step up and swing as quickly as possible. Although novice golfers did better when they took their time, expert golfers did worse.

The lesson from the laboratory is clear: thinking about tasks that don’t require thought isn’t just pointless, it’s debilitating. It may be wise to watch our fingers when we’re doing surgery or shaving the family dog, but not when we’re driving or typing, because once our brains learn to do something automatically they don’t appreciate interference. The moment we start thinking about when to step on the clutch or hit the alt key, our once-seamless performance becomes slow, clumsy or impossible.

It pretty much sums up my crit at the Wagga Classic at the weekend*. I had cruised the whole 30 minutes of the crit. Perhaps I was in a grade too easy, perhaps I had underestimated my form, whatever the reason I had been largely in control of the race. That is until the last lap and a half.

All of a sudden I started thinking.

Thinking about not pushing through gaps that were there, because maybe that would put me on the inside when we got to the corner and we all know "inside suicide".

Thinking about timing of when I pushed for position in the bunch and hesitating when there was a blatant opportunity.

And worst of all, thinking about winning the race.

Apparently this sudden "brain activity" was apparent on the sideline. No longer was I one of the stronger more dominant riders in the bunch. I was some nufty who was suddenly disorientated and bewildered by the surroundings.

I managed to pull myself together a little bit and did hold up a bike that had a rear wheel sliding and skipping more than once. I think I was 7th over the line.

But, the disappointment and "what if" still lingers...

Image Credit

*We are not talking about the road race because, well, I just went out for a training ride to get ready for Sunday- OK?!