2008 didn’t look like a great year for me in terms of racing my bike. The 2008 season started with my doctor finding some blood clots in my right calf in December, followed by a diagnosis of Protein C Deficiency, a genetic coagulation disorder that means I’m roughly 8 times more likely than the average person to develop blood clots. Medication for this is Coumadin, a blood thinner that results in one being at a much greater risk of bleeding to death in the case of any accident. A case where the treatment is more dangerous than the condition.

It was clear that mass start racing was not in the cards for me as long as I was taking coumadin. I still wanted to race my bike though, so I focused on time trials for the first few months of 2008. I know what you’re thinking, it’s still possible to crash in a TT…and you’re right. It’s also possible to get hit by a bus while crossing the street, but my feeling was if I was careful and rode TTs in a way that was safe (not on dangerous courses, take no risks in turns, etc)…it was worth the minimal risk. Besides, exercise is also considered to be excellent therapy for dissolving clots, and with my other various (mainly back) injuries, cycling’s down to about the only exercise I can consistently do – and I’m a lot more consistent if I have goals.

So I did the 3 NM TTs available to me in early 2008, picking up a second (to teammate Josh Liberles) and two 3rd places. Not so bad, kept me interested, but then the NM TT season basically came to an end in April. Needing a new goal, I planned to travel to Louisville, KY in the summer for masters road nationals, with the individual TT as my focus. I kept dialing in my TT equipment with a new helmet, a UCI legal powertap rear wheel, making position tweaks, and of course focusing my training almost exclusively on TT preparation.

Somewhere along the way I was reading through the records set an hour’s drive south of me in Moriarty, NM at the Record Challenge. I saw my friend Jim held the 70+ tandem 40k TT record along with US TT legend John Frey, and then I saw the 90+ tandem record was a couple minutes slower…my racing age is 41 this year, and I remembered my friend Andy was 49. Dr. Andy Coggan happens to live in Missouri, but he’s directly on the way to Louisville, and he owns a tandem. Andy and I talk a lot about racing and training, and he’s been an exceptional TTer his entire racing career. So he’s one of the few guys I trust to get on a bike with me and we’re going to be in sync for a full gas TT effort without needing a lot of talking. Andy also runs his seat about 7cm lower than mine, enabling him to tuck in nicely behind me on the tandem.

So I emailed Andy to see if he was interested in going after the 90+ tandem record on Labor Day weekend. He said he was up for it, but why don’t we give the tandem a run at masters nationals (where we were both going to be doing individual TTs in the morning of 6/30 anyway), and see if we were competitive. Sounded great to me…so Andy got to work dialing in his old Burley for TT use with my position on the front (captain’s) end.

Late June arrives, I drive out to Andy’s place two days before the TTs, and we spend a good part of that Saturday riding around on the thing once I’ve got my pedals and seat installed. There’s a complication though. Even though I’ve raced for 22 years, in events from track and cyclo-cross to road racing, crits, and even the odd MTB race…I can’t keep the thing on less than half a traffic lane, and I can’t get in the aerobars to save my life. This isn’t good, and after an hour I’m seriously considering scrapping the tandem idea. Andy and I spend some time going over what it could possibly be on the bike, and we even switch positions for a short ride to see if it’s simply my inexperience driving a tandem. It’s not, Andy’s even worse driving than I am. We eventually figure out his headset is pitted and fouled, and no amount of adjustment allows it to turn freely with any load at all on the bike.

So we regroup and start calling bike shops. The more mechanically inclined reader will recognize a 1 1/8″ threaded headset as a somewhat rare part to find on a Saturday afternoon in Suburban Missouri…yet Ballwin Cycles just 10 minutes away has a brand new Deore XT model in stock. Andy, his daughter Madeleine and I head on over and pick it up. Good deal…I stay overnight with Andy, on Sunday I drive to Louisville to preview the TT course, Andy installs the XT headset. We plan to do our individual TT runs (I started around 8:30, Andy around 9:15), then meet up to get a last practice run on the Burly before our noonish tandem start.

My ITT run started well enough, my power, pacing, and legs all felt really good. I was on my way to what would have been an excellent effort for me, one of my best long TTs of all time…then I flatted my front wheel about a mile after the turnaround. OK, flats happen…I just sit up and roll back to the start area at 18mph (I had enough air left in the front to nurse it home). I clean up, have some food and some more coffee, and find Andy to discuss how were going to use all that extra energy I’m going to have after only TTing 22 of the 39k. When I downloaded my TT file later that day, it did indeed look like it was going to be one of my best TT performances ever, and the result would have been outside the top 10. So to a certain extent, I’m glad I flatted and had more energy for the tandem run, getting that result after riding well would have been a big letdown for me. All respect to Steve Spanbauer (my 40-44 age group winner), and the all the other guys who were faster than I might have been had I finished as well as I think I would have.

So it’s tandem time. About 11:30 Andy and I suit up again for our second TT of the day, John Freisen had sent with me another Colavita NM p/b JNF Enterprises skinsuit for Andy, so we matched and looked pretty good. Andy’s normally gaudy purple tandem even matches the panel on the back of the shorts. We start off rolling around the parking lot, and immediately I can feel the new headset, it’s like a different bike! I can get in the aerobars at any speed, and feel comfortable doing it. No more deathgrip, no more point-and-pray steering. So once we’re comfortable with that, we go about practicing U-turns.

Normally the turnarond is the most technically difficult part of any tandem TT, in Louisville it was at a new level due to the extremely narrow road – there is no shoulder at the turnaround, it’s a narrow two-lane country road, the white line is the edge, literally. I even talked to one ITT rider that day who put a foot down there it was so tight. Since I’m a ‘crosser, we not only practice the ideal turnaround (same as an ITT turn), but we also practiced a “bailout” manouver where Andy stayed clipped in, weight neutral, and I’d unclip and dab an inside foot. We probably did 20 practice turns…to where I felt about as comfortable as I was going to feel.

We do a couple efforts to make sure the legs are warmed up (doesn’t take much as we both rode 39k that morning), then head over to the start to make fun of the volunteer who gets “Verheul” right then botches “Coggan”. In all seriousness though, all the volunteers and officials were great all week. I’ve attended elite and masters nationals many times since 1990 (Albany!), and this was one of the best run versions of masters nats I’ve seen, Louisville (Loo-uh-vul) was a wonderful host city.

We start. Honestly, after all the planning and prep, the frustration with the bike a couple days earlier, and the disappointment of the flat earlier that day, the actual TT itself went by pretty quickly. I was realy focused on steering as fast a line as possible while avoiding the little cracks and bumps in the pavement, pedaling for 49 minutes was pretty much automatic for us. Andy yelled at me to shift a couple times, I’m normally a 95rpm kind of guy in a TT, he’s 75…and while I tried to keep him comfortable, I forgot a few times. The turnaround? We nailed it. I don’t mean we hit it, I mean we did it probably as fast as most singles did. The official there even gave us a “nice job!” as we accelerated away. The overriding sensation on a tandem is one of speed. We went nearly 30mph for 49 minutes on a windy day, and that’s a pretty fun sensation. We suffered a bit on the return leg with the headwind, and we got slowed down by a landscaping truck that pulled out in front of us until we passed it…but basically a fun ride.

We finish, roll around for a few minutes to cool down, then bring the tandem back to the cars and chat with a few fellow competitors. I get cleaned up, changed, and head over to the women’s TT podium to watch my client Debbie pick up her silver medal from the women’s 35-39 TT. Way to go Debbie! As I’m walking back to the car Andy calls me from the results area to tell me we won our age group, and were the second fastest tandem overall, only losing to the elite winners (who doubled up and also won 70+ in bck to back rides!) by 15 seconds. So that’s pretty cool, and then it hits me that we’re going to receive two of the 600+ masters national champion jerseys that are handed out every year!

Results and USA Cycling report here.

We do the podium, it’s fun, sorry no action pics but I didn’t see a single photographer on the narrow, shaded course. My friend Rob is nice anough to wait around for our podium and get the shots. My first masters national title, and given my plans to go back to school as well as my coagulation disorder, perhaps my last. The following day of course I wear the jersey while training on the RR course in Louisville, a big shoutout to Brad and the other locals who show me all the “local lines” through the many high speed turns in Cherokee Park.

So, now we’re looking for ways to get faster for Record Challenge later this year. We didn’t even use aerowheels in Louisville (145 spaced rear among other reasons), and Andy’s Burley is far from aero…so we’re looking to borrow a 130 spaced Calfee tandem and set up some Zipp wheels (disc with 808 or 1080 front) with Vittoria Cronos. Handlebars are still TBD, but Andy has some sweet Zipp Vukas that were his wife’s for her recent US National Pursuit silver medal. Hopefully Colavita NM p/b JNF Enterprises can take the 90+ tandem record if we get good conditions, and both have good days physically.

More thanks go out to John Freisen for making sure I had all the equipment we needed, Charles Cash and his wife Debra for excellent host housing, the city of Louisville and Tom Vinson of USA Cycling for running a great event, my associate coach Chris Mayhew for local knowledge & checking my training plan, my stoker Andy for pedaling hard and letting me drive, and of course my wife Karen and our various animals for their support and for being OK with me being gone for 8 days.