My First World Championships; An Unexpected Adventure

Last week was the highlight of the season and of my athletic career thus far: the 2014 UCI Road World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain. I was beyond excited to have the opportunity to test my legs against the World’s best and honoured to have been selected for TIBCO’s Team Time Trial squad. The course was perfect for me – just shy of 40km, smooth roads, lots of flat or slightly downhill sections, only a couple technical corners, and just a short climb in the finishing kilometres. It was the kind of course where my love of a huge gear and low cadence would work to the team’s advantage. The plan was to use my power on the flats and downhills over the first 30km to buy the team some speed and time, and then to use the sprinters and climbers on the squad for the climb, descent and finishing kilometeres. I was planning on riding my big ring (54T) for the whole course, but had changed my small chainring from a 39T to a 42T just in case I couldn’t make it over the hills in a 54.

You know you’re #livingthedream when you see signs to Madrid on your training ride

We arrived in Ponferrada a couple days before the race and had some time to settle in, preview the course, and experience the local culture. While I have been to southern Spain numerous times, this was my first time in northern Spain. It was beautiful! Driving into Leon from the Santander airport, we saw huge fields of golden sunflowers, red cliffs, rolling hills and herds of the glistening black bulls and elegant Andalusian horses that Spain is famous for. When we went to pre-ride the course, the magnitude of the event really started to sink in: the roads were barricaded, we had a police escort, and media was everywhere. Only 24 hours until the real race and time was flying by. I woke up the next morning feeling nervous but excited; I had slept well, eaten well, my legs were feeling fresh and I was feeling confident and ready to race. Today was going to be a good day.

Waiting to get on the closed course for a second round

Before I knew it, I was on my Kurt Kinetic trainer rocking through my warmup. I had made a new playlist that started with a motivational mp3 titled “Why We Fall”, all about chasing success and overcoming adversity, before getting into my usual mix of Tiesto and gangsta rap. Little did I know how relevant that mp3 would be.

Almost an hour later I was ready to race, got off my trainer and went to get my helmet, caffeine power gel, and aero booties. It was 13minutes to the start and time to head over for bike check. I grabbed my bike, saw the severed shift cable and panicked. Somehow the cable for the rear shifting had been cut and I barely had enough time to get to bike check, let alone re-cable my bike. $h!t.

Panicking was obviously not helping the situation and so I forced myself to take a deep breath and fought to keep my emotions under control. The worst thing I could do would be to panic and distract my team mates mere minutes before the start. I called our director, Ed Beamon, over and showed him the problem. The panic must have been written all over my face and the first thing he did was to give me a big hug while I fought to hold back the tears of anger and disappointment that were threatening to spill over. With Ed taking control of the situation I was able to breathe, refocus and get it together. He gave me the spare bike and sent me over to the start. At that point I was convinced I would be doing the race on the spare bike. There were less than ten minutes before the gun.

30 seconds before the start, lined up on the spare road bike

With three minutes to start we stepped onto the start ramp, lined up and focused. With 30 seconds to go I was clipped in, focused on my breathing and the opening meters of the race. 15 seconds to go and I closed my eyes waiting for the beeping of the timer to start the final countdown. Jo’s yell yanked me out of my trance – 11 seconds to go and our mechanic was throwing my TT bike over the barricade about 10m from the bottom of the start ramp. I looked at Jo and she kept yelling at me to go get my bike! Screw the timer, get the bike!

The sprint for the bike, less than 10 seconds before the start

So I jumped off the spare bike, sprinted down the ramp as quickly as one can sprint in bike cleats, grabbed my Fuji TT bike and sprinted back up the ramp……cyclocross season is starting so it was probably good training for that. I made it behind the start line just as the rest of the team started and threw my leg over my bike getting one foot clipped in without too much fumbling around. The adrenaline had me shaking and was fogging my mind; all I could think of was that I need to get rolling and catch onto the back of the train. One foot clipped in I rolled down the ramp and started chasing my team, immediately realizing that my bike was in the small ring, the 42, and shortly after that realizing that it would not shift into the big ring: big problem. The start of the course is fast, on a bit of a downhill and for a minute or two I did not think I would be able to catch the team with such a small gear. It’s a good thing I started doing cadence pyramids in training because it took about 200rpm to generate enough speed to finally catch onto the back of the team. The overwhelming wave of adrenaline was definitely helping things as well.

FInally on the back of the train (I’m #126)

Finally in the draft of my team mates, I took a second to breathe and evaluate the situation. There was absolutely no shifting on the front indicating that a cable had been cut, come loose or been disconnected. There wasn’t really anything I could do to fix that. Running through the course profile in my head, I decided the best thing I could do would be to try to take long pulls on sections with wind or slight uphills where I would be able to generate some speed and power despite the small chainring. In the downhill sections and through the technical sections I had no option but to fight to stay on the back of the train. If I let a gap open I was fairly certain my chances of chasing back on were slim to none. By the time I had settled down, come up with a plan and informed the rest of the team of my mechanical problems we were already 10km into the course and I barely remembered any of it.

My body, saturated with adrenaline, was feeling no pain and I was able to pull on the front repeatedly and at a ridiculously high cadence until about 25km into the course when I finally hit the wall. Hard. Suddenly the acid was stronger than the adrenaline and my legs screamed in protest. Forced to spin, I was unable to give them any real reprieve without risking being dropped from the team and so all I could do was to HTFU and do my best to recover a bit in the team’s draft. The pain made the next 10km seem to drag on for hours and, by the time I saw the finishing climb ahead of us, I had resigned myself to being dropped from the train before we reached the top. There was just no way I could push through more pain. Just as I was starting to allow myself to look forward to the physical relief of sitting up and dropping off, one of my team mates yelled out that she was done as she dropped from the train. We were now down to five riders, four needed to make it to the finish. Halfway up the climb another one of my team mates was dropped and we were down to four. I panicked.

It’s a good thing my computer was still on the spare bike as I’m pretty sure my heart rate at that point in the race had gone from the “this hurts” zone to “stop or you’re heart is going to explode and you’ll drop dead off your bike” zone. My three remaining team mates did everything they could to get me up that hill and, with their help, pedal stroke for pedal stroke, through wheezing, desperate gasps for air, I somehow made it to the crest. On the descent we reached over 70kph and my legs just about spun right off but the finish was now so close I could taste it. Another wave of adrenaline brought a second wind and the final kilometre flew by. In what seemed like mere seconds we were at the final corner, sprinting for the finish line 500m away and then, just as quickly as the race had started, it was all over.

Last corner – 500m to go

Of course we were all disappointed with how the race went, but that is the way that sport goes. Nothing is ever perfect. At the end of the day, it’s how you react to the cards you’re dealt that matters. In the grand scheme of things, what happened to us was not so bad. No one was hurt, it brought us together as a team, it forced us to really fight. Next year we will come back stronger. Personally, I am still making the most of this amazing opportunity – absorbing the experience of competing at that level, learning all that I can, and taking the disappointment and frustration and using it as a burning source of motivation and focus in the training building up to next year’s World Championships.

Thank you Fuji, Reynolds, Arundel, Defeet, Voler, Lake Cycling, Shimano and all of our other sponsors for making this season possible