Fritter & Waste the Hours in an Offhand Way
The most famous record in all of cycling is the hour record. Since the days of the high-wheelers, this brutal effort against the clock has been the pinnacle of time trialling. So it would seem inevitable that I’d give it a shot myself.
Unfortunately, I never thought of that while living in Boston, probably because there’s no cycling track to use for such an attempt. Fast forward to Pittsburgh, where there’s a nice cycling track down by Highland Park, and you have an explanation for why sixteen years passed between my taking up the sport and undertaking my first personal hour record.
Thursday morning there was a break in our unstable, overcast weather, so I headed down to the Bud Harris track to do my thing.
It was apparent from the start that several factors would prevent me from doing my best possible time trial. One was the simple fact that it is an outdoor track, so any wind would detract from my performance. Another was the track surface; asphalt is more porous than a wooden track and thus offers more rolling resistance. But most significant is the ten-foot incline that leads up to the start/finish line and then down into the first corner. While that’s a tiny hill, it slowed me down each and every one of the forty times I traversed it.
The first fifteen minutes, I settled into a rhythm and selected my line down the straights and around the banked corners. But by the time I was a third of the way through the hour, the constant effort was starting to wear. I’d spend the remaining 40 minutes trying not to puke.
Normally cycling has its own rhythm of ups and downs, with plentiful opportunities for a rider to coast downhill or stop at intersections. But a flat track with no stopping or coasting requires an unnaturally unvarying effort, maintaining a steady-state 95 percent heart rate for the entire hour. It is far more reminiscent of being on the indoor trainer (i.e. torture device) than the open road. Just looking at the unchanging heart rate and cadence data from my cyclo-computer still makes me want to cry.
In the end, my hour effort ended with a total of 20.77 miles (or 33.47 km). That’s good enough to have stood as a world record until 1887! For me, that’s fine as a first effort, and I’m happy that it was above 20 miles. But I don’t imagine I’ll want to undertake something that monotonous very frequently going forward.
After a rest, I started home, noticing some dark clouds coming in and a freshening breeze. A few minutes later, it was a full-bore typhoon thunderstorm with mid-day darkness, tropical downpour, localized street flooding, and wind-shorn limbs across the road. It’s been a long time since I’ve been soaked to the bone on the bike, but at least the time trial wasn’t interfered with!
Here’s the GPS log. Lap 1 is the ride to the track, Lap 2 is the time trial, and Lap 3 is the ride home.