Almost Time for Time Trials!

After several years of wishing I had the availability to race in the Karen Hornbostel Memorial Time Trial at Cherry Creek State Park, this year I had the epiphany that I’M THE ONE WHO BUILDS THE TEACHING SCHEDULE EACH TERM! Duh. With this in mind I ran my classes a little earlier in the day so I can get over to the park in time to take part in the race. Very exciting.

Of course, it’s never that simple, right?

This time trial series runs seven weeks in the spring, on Wednesday evenings. It’s an official USA Cycling event and part of the Rocky Mountain Road Cup calendar. As such I needed to register as a USA Cycling member. I’m happy to support this organization, but the fee seemed a bit steep. Still, I couldn’t help but feel kind of proud to have my very own USA Cycling Licence number.

After that there was the bike. I had spent some time this fall building up the Cannondale SystemSix frame with an Ultegra groupset and had been riding it quite a bit until the weather got wintery. I love the deep dish wheels on this bike. It cuts through the air really well and just feels fast. Here’s a shot of her down in Cherry Creek State Park, my default ride if I’m just headed out from the house for an hour or so:

The bike would have been fine to ride as-is in the KHMTT series but, I really wanted to modify things a bit so I could get into a more aero position for the races. I’ll be honest, I think the handlebars on the SystemSix are not even rated for clamp-on extensions but I found these bars made by ENVE that seemed like they might work and I took a chance and bought them on backorder. And so two months later they finally arrived and I spent the morning today fiddling with them and getting them set up on the bike. They were not a perfect fit to the KNOT handlebar on the SystemSix but I used some foam tape on the top side of the mounts and cut up an innertube to sit in between the mount and the bar on the bottom side. When I torqued things up it seemed very solid so hopefully the whole thing doesn’t explode when I take it out for a ride.

Since this bike has the Ultegra Di2 wireless group I also found some remote shifter buttons that installed nicely on the ends of the bars. Slick!

Still need to wrap them with bar tape and probably make some adjustments after I ride the bike a while. That will have to wait for now though. The high is supposed to be 10 degrees tomorrow. Ugh. C’mon spring!