Socially distanced Racing During COVID: KV-BATT 2020

KV-BATT is the Kissena Velodrome's Best All Around Time Trialist competition

I’m a notoriously slow starter. In the solitude of winter, I’m still in hibernation while most of my teammates are knee deep riding indoors to get an early jump on the field. So when the shelter in place orders put the clamp down on racing, my teammates seemed all dressed up with nowhere to go.  The indoor-riding aficionados on the team channeled these early efforts towards doing silly things on Zwift. I’ll admit to downloading at Scott Rettino’s spreadsheet and casually knocking off some of the shorter courses on the list but the rest of the team were ticking courses off at a dizzying rate. I was never going to finish riding such a massive list that included a number of 5+ hour stints on the trainer. Riding inside is just not my jam. I even went as far as getting a Kickr and a dedicated riding desk to help ease the grind. I was in no rush to torture myself inside without a road racing carrot to chase. I took a slower build-up to an uncertain season of bike racing.

One could say that the steel is real/fixie bike phenomena of the mid-2000’s started me on this racing journey.  Up until then, I was doing just fine riding my brawny urban assault commuter until it was stolen from an LES Bodega whilst in a drunken stupor. A few weeks later my LBS rolled out a Giant fixed gear bike to test ride. It was shiny and silver- I was sold. This was my gateway bike. After a few weekends of riding around Central Park in running shorts and trainers, I begun to realize that there was bike racing in NYC.  I sold the Giant and bought an early 90’s steel Lemond on Craigslist and joined the CRCA. That first year I fumbled along in a handful local park races, and a few Wednesday Kissena Twilight Series races. I was devouring whatever I could find online as far as training, usually scouring various bike training message boards. At those first few park races an older gentleman would serenade me “the oldest bike in the peloton” every time we crossed paths. I think he meant it as a compliment. After a few road races, I went to Kissena Velodrome and on a borrowed track loaner, I jumped into the deep end did a few Saturday practices, and then signed up for a few races and basically just tried not to crash anyone out.

Back to the future. 2008 vs 2020. It looks so easy- back then. 2020 Image courtesy of Victor Chan

Which brings me to 2020. One of my teammates has been threatening to sell his track bike for the last few seasons and finally went through with it. He offered it up on our team’s Slack gear channel and for a few days no one jumped. It wasn’t the best fit for me as it was 1 size larger than I would typically ride, but it was close enough. I’ve always wanted to get back onto the track and I figured that I could make a size larger work. If it didn’t, I’d shoot some pics of it and then hand it to our team’s resident e-bay’er to list.  

With no racing on the cards, and WFH in effect, I figured I had some time to have some fun and reacquainted myself with a fixed gear and maybe even try my hand on the velodrome again when racing re-started. A week later, a teammate posted a timely link to the Kissena KV-BATT competition. Suddenly, I had a goal of sorts in my sights. From the Pink Rhino website:

KV-BATT is the Kissena Velodrome’s Best All Around Time Trialist competition. Just because the Coronavirus is ruining our lives, doesn’t mean we should let it ruin our lives. Racers gotta race, and with inspiration from Paul Coluccio and his Long Island Social Distancing Individual Time Trial, we have developed a way to do it, while also keeping ourselves socially distanced.

In a nutshell, each rider will submit times for their time trials to be done at the track to a submission web form listed below. The times will be translated by our magic website (ENIAC) into points for each TT and tabumatized. Results will be posted on the results page.

The TTs are the Flying 200m, the 500m, the Flying 500m, the Kilometer/1000m, the Flying Kilometer, and the 2000m, 3000m, and 4000m Pursuits. So there is quite a range. You must complete the two or three elements assigned for that week on the same day, but if other people are at the track to do this, you should take turns (and help them out, why dontcha?) You may take more than one crack at any element, but the last crack you take is the one that counts, regardless of the time, so think hard about that decision (and honesty is a virtue.) Multiple submissions for each week will result in the least favorable submission being used for scoring.

The last time I raced a fixed geared bike was in 2008. Even back then, I wasn’t really a track rider, I was more of a track tourist. I wasn’t really prepared nor was I training for these kinds of efforts. I’d been during mostly endurance and tempo efforts just trying to maintain a base. I was able to get to the Velodrome on week 2 to check out the atmosphere and to ride around to get used to being on the banking. I’d take mental notes and come back the next week to perhaps set some times. Andrew Johnson of the Pink Rhino team (who organizes this competition) planned to be on-hand for 4-5 hours on a given weekend, volunteering to time anyone wanted to race. I asked a lot of questions that he generously answered, and he suggested that I should set some lap times rather than just ride around.

After a quick warm-up, I got down to business. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really close to being anywhere ready to set some competitive times, and going all out for 4000 meters followed by doing the same for 1000 meters made me nearly throw up. I decided to do the more endurance-focused effort (the 4000) first, I started out with a decent pace, but after 4 laps (of 10) I was regretting my exuberant start. I was in the red with more than ½ way to go and in that terrible place of regret. The last 2 laps I could not feel from the waist down. I was glad to be done. 6:19.75 was good for 9/12 starters. After a short break and an even shorter warm-up, I jumped back on to attempt a 1000m effort. After conferring with a few other racers, I decided the best strategy was to go as hard as possible once up to speed and then hang on for the finish. 1:27.66 put me in 9th again. After my effort, I hung around to watch some of the other riders attempts and chatted up with a few regulars at the track. It was a very welcoming atmosphere. I was hooked.

Week 3’s events were 200m, 500m, and 1000m.  I thought that these events suited my physiology a little better. The 200m wasn’t too bad – a 14.90 effort that left something in the back pocket for later. I used all of that and a good bit more doing a 41.67 for the 500m. I was really suffering after this effort. My legs felt like they were going to explode. After a good 15 minutes spent recovering, I watched as a local national champ showed up and put a few times in. Seeing her approach to the 500m I realized I jumped way too early. I started my acceleration 30 meters too early – and then faded by about that length the finish. After spending more than enough time laying on the exposed infield, watching other riders make a few attempts, I reluctantly took to the track to do the final event, the 1000m. I was not feeling so motivated so I basically called it in. I was surprised to only be 1.1 seconds slower than last’s weeks effort.

The final week’s events were a repeat of week 2 (1000m and 4000m). For comparison’s sake, I managed to improve my times (slightly) from 2 weeks ago. I really did try and get a better run at the 1000m. It was a reminder of how much it really hurt to go all out for over a minute. It’s going to take some trial and error to find improvement the of each of these events. I'm finding out thus far that the track racing is extremely technical and suits someone with a slight equipment fetish. Let’s see, a 80mm rear wheel with a 60mm front, 35mm aero bars, and a…

Not quite 1.21 Jigawatts. Image courtesy of Victor Chan