Old 06-14-19, 08:39 AM
  #665  
Hermes
Version 7.0
 
Hermes's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: SoCal
Posts: 13,097

Bikes: Too Many

Mentioned: 297 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 1324 Post(s)
Liked 2,437 Times in 1,425 Posts
I suggest that there are some cone turn arounds where one would want the time trial bike to turn on a dime. For example, Bend, OR hosted the masters nationals and the 20K TT turn around was on a downhill section of narrow road with an off camber sloping pavement with large broken slag on the side of the road that dropped off. If one missed the turn, it was a crash into the broken rock. Who sets up a course like this? USAC.

My wife was racing and we pre rode the course, She looks at the turnaround and freaks out. So we practice turn arounds together for 30 minutes until she can nail that with confidence at speed. One can always slow down, uncleat and slowly using the maximum steering of the bike make the turn but that is too slow. This is the equivalent of the pro golf shot over water requiring 250 yard drive to carry the water versus the longer route that leaves a long iron to the green. Without turning radius, the only choice is the pro shot.

What happened to my wife in the race was that USAC gave her a poor start position in the TT versus her national ranking that resulted in her arriving at the turnaround with 3 other women (she caught them), one of which crashed going around such that she had to slow down substantially and she lost the national championship by 5 seconds coming in 3rd. USAC had nothing to say about the poor starting position than we do the best we can.

Last edited by Hermes; 06-14-19 at 08:55 AM.
Hermes is offline