I'm riding my first 10 mile time trial of the year tonight. It's at the Olympic Park in London. That makes it sound rather grand. It isn't. A local cycling team, of which I used to be a member in a previous life, organises it. It's really low key stuff, and no-one, but no-one will be paying a blind bit of attention to what I'm doing, and yet I'm as nervous as a kitten in dog-filled caravan.
And this is route of my problems with tt-ing. One must be in control of oneself to execute the event correctly. You must mete out the effort over the entire length of the course, slowing increasing the pace until you hit your threshold with a mile to go. A mile can be sustained at this intensity without cracking. Any earlier than this and you get into oxygen debt and the game's up.
You can see the dilemma. Your energy levels are at their highest at the start of the event, so you have to go slower than you know you can. That's tough when there are other people on the track who are faster than you. The temptation to follow them is huge. But it's a temptation that must be resisted.
I've never managed to resist in all the time trials I've done, and that's troubling. I'm always left with the knowledge that I've not shown myself in the best light to the other riders. Tonight, it must be different; I must be calm and controlled.
Chris Froome likens time trialling to rolling out a huge, heavy, furled carpet. At the start it unfurls slowly, speeding up as it goes until it hits its maximum just as the finish line approaches. And Chris Boardman describes it as more of an art than a science. I'm quite good at art. I'm artistic. I just need to show it. On a bike. At twenty-four miles an hour.
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