The Chronicles of a Di2 battery cont'd
The trials and tribulations of the randomly discharging Di2 battery had all but been forgotten. I have a spare battery and the battery is now religiously charged the night before a race, not stored on 'Percy' any more and generally treated with much caution and suspicion! This seems to have worked well given there hasn't been any further problems to date... Cue the fact that they might be about to rear their ugly head again at some point soon.Anyway, the TLI Cycling National TT Championships - a date that has been on my racing calendar since their announcement earlier on in the year and one of my A races. They have a tendency to clash with the RTTC National 25 Championships, which I rode in preference last year. On reflection I did this because I felt that I should! Cycling Time Trials is the TT governing body and their 10, 25 & 50 Nationals are classed as the blue ribbon events - if you want to get noticed you need to be on the podium there! Thus I conformed to the norm and duly rode the National 25 last year (see blog post). I didn't have any team obligations to do this and even though I had a good ride (on a baking hot day with traffic and roundabouts aplenty), I later regretted not doing what I perhaps really wanted to do. Does that make sense?!
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| The locals! |
Thus this year there was no question, a trip to the New Forest was on the cards and I really wanted the opportunity to try and win the National stripes. The start times were early on Sunday morning, so an overnight stay was in order to save getting up at 04:00 and hoping that traffic was clear on the route. We found a lovely B&B right by Race HQ which couldn't have been better. Arriving nice and early on Saturday morning, I was able to have a pre-race spin around the course, identify any hazards, familiarise myself with the best line and gauge my gears (the irony of this will become apparent)! Having satisfied myself with this we had a quiet afternoon, firstly at The Lavender Farm just down the road - the gardens were spectacular, then having a little mooch around Lyndhurst.
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| Beautiful location for quiet contemplation |
After a great night's sleep (which is always a bonus somewhere strange) and a lovely breakfast, it was time to warm up. Vanessa has kindly allowed us to set the turbo up in the garden, so it was lovely and peaceful, away from the hubbub. I like to just get my head down and follow my structured routine without the distraction of everyone else around me, so this was perfect! My legs have been notoriously sore this year and on many occasions haven't felt great in the warm-up at all. I was hesitating to think that they actually felt good, wow, could we actually have nailed the preparation for an A race perfectly...? I didn't dare dwell on this, I was just pleased that they weren't a distraction.
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| Great warm up setting |
I headed off to the start, armed and ready for what I knew was going to be a tough course. The cattle grid shortly after the start was the first obstacle to tick off on my invisible list and then appeared to go as smoothly as it could, or so I thought. I quickly got down to business as I knew that the first little technical section could easily be where the race was won or lost. It rode much better on Percy, at speed than I thought it would and I was through before I'd had time to think about it. Onto the grippy section where it was gently climbing, rolling, climbing a bit more steeply before a nice sweeping downhill around a left hand bend. I carried lots more speed down here than I had envisaged so quickly had to readjust my weight to ensure I stayed on the inside of the white lines! So far so good until click, click, CLICK... No, nothing! Quick, try the other shifter... click, click, more frantic pressing... NOTHING!
My first thought was that the battery must have discharged. Unlikely but not impossible given its history. Clearly there wasn't anything I could do about this so it was head down and pedal hard time! Unfortunately I was in the big ride in my 11 sprocket, my biggest gear, so no easy pedalling here. I tried to harness my frustration and disappointment into pedalling hard whilst intermittently pressing the buttons in the hope that my gears would start working again just as quickly as they had stopped! Encircling the roundabout to head back towards the start the realisation that the descent I had just tried to capitalise on needed to be climbed, this wasn't going to be easy. I decided to get off before the road went up to see if I had a loose connection - any time lost doing this would be gained three fold if I could make my gears work! To my surprise the battery had completely disappeared and the mount was loose on the frame. Clearly I was in for a tough final 7 miles of the course and the sooner I got this underway the sooner it would be over.
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| One of the many quotes at The Lavender Farm that resonated |
It was like a race of attrition in terms of cadence, 50, 40, 30... somehow I just had to keep the pedals turning. I was on the base bars, out of the saddle doing my best to keep moving. I caught the rider in front but knew as soon as the road went up again he'd come past. I had half an eye on my power meter knowing that with the shear effort to turn the pedals I was emptying my legs and not so much my lungs. I passed the start and knew that I had to give the following downhill section everything I had before the left hand turn and return section into a block headwind. Again my cadence was down in the 50's and after the second left hand turn 40's. I was battling into a headwind on uneven tarmac, wrestling with the base bars to try and keep any respectable motion going. As if this wasn't taxing enough the short, steep hill just before the finish was looming, not just literally but also like a big black cloud in my head as I realised I wouldn't make it up in the only gear I had. The road kicked up half a mile before the hill and I knew I was slowing already. The only thing for it was to keep the pedals turning for as long as I possibly could and then get off and run... Yes, seriously, it was this or give up right there on the side of the road! I don't quit so running it was. I think the spectators must have thought I was mad, after all with a full range of gears it would have been no trouble at all! No time to dwell on their opinions though, I had a race to salvage!
Getting back on as fast as I could and desperately trying to get moving again I dug for one final effort, 500m to the finish line. Almost as soon as I had crossed it the adrenaline disappeared and the realisation that of all the days for this to happen it would be my A race. The day I had worked so hard for, tapered for, even felt ready for and it had all gone, just like that in what I can only assume was the vibration of the cattle grids. The disappointment was palpable, I'd let myself down, Paul down and most of all I'd wasted all that form that I'd worked so hard to build. However, I had finished and in so doing had given it my absolute best, I'd dug deep and deeper again.
I could therefore not contain my surprise to see that I had actually, somehow, done enough to still secure the Ladies Championship. Wow, nightmare to fairy tale in 5 minutes.
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| Fairy tale ending |
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