2nd ITT at Bangalore Amateur Racing: What colour is your pain?

“There is something very pure about the suffering in a Time Trial. It isn’t linked to what anyone else is doing – it is completely internal: how much pain can you soak up, without any external influences?

Long – and often abusive – conversations with your inner self are the only thing to keep you company throughout the race. And you often gain profound (only to yourself and others who have done a TT) insights into the nature of pain.

Tyler Hamilton said that the colour of pain for him was green. What’s your colour? Vandit Kalia is urging people to get out and race at the Bangalore Amateur Racing ITT.

Balu locked in his hurt zone. (Photo: Vinay Yadav from Veloscope)

Bangalore Amateur Racing: Series 2013A – 2nd ITT:

I set out to discover the colour of my pain and got to the starting line of the second BAR ITT on Sunday. However, I discovered a different sort suffering than what I was expecting. Instead of suffering by getting into the hurt zone, I got involved in a very abusive conversation with myself for not being able to get into the hurt zone.

At those rare times when I manage to get into the zone, I seem to enjoy the conversations with pain. However, when for some reason or the other when I’m not willing or capable of getting into that hurt zone, I end up with abusive conversations with myself. I prefer the conversations with pain rather than with myself. But we don’t always have our way. Do we?

But many of the 26 participants seemed to have had their way and seemed to have done a much better job against the clock. New course records were set and remarkable improvements were made over their previous performances and many colours of pain discovered.

Some set the roads on fire!

Jehaan Panjuani of Procycle set a new course record with a 37:35, Rajanikanth was the second fastest for the day with 38:24 while Arvind Bhateja of Spectrum Racing finished third fastest with 39:42. All three times were faster than the fastest time in the first ITT, which was 39:48 by Siddarth Kansal.

Placings based on fastest times for the day.

There were riders who have shown great improvement from their previous times in the first BAR ITT. The handicap system that we are experimenting with this series helped find out who made the most improvements over their previous performances.

Sharath MS came first under the handicap system followed by Praval Ray and Rajanikanth, who made it to the podium both in terms of absolute performance and based on improvement.

Placings based on the most improvements from the previous race.

Hema Rajanikanth was the sole women representative at the race and finished a little faster than a couple of men riders too.

Other important stuff:

Big thanks to Venkatachalam (DaLam) and Kiran Kumar (Tusker) from Cleated Warriors for manning the registrations and timing duties. They did a brilliant job in getting the race started on time (well, actually we were late again by 3mins and started at 7:03am) and we were able to get the timings out by 8:20am.

A few glitches were there in terms of three riders missing the U-turn because we didn’t have anybody manning the U-turn like we did during our first ITT. While we want to minimise the number of volunteers required to conduct the race with, I guess marking the U-turn point or putting someone there will help. We’ll take care of that next time.

Thanks again to Procycle for providing some post race HorsePower for the riders. Thanks to Vinay Yadav of Veloscope for covering the event.

Help us be punctual:

There were a few riders who turned up late, nearly 30mins after everyone else left. We let them start because we didn’t want to disappoint them. But that only resulted in the volunteers having to wait much after everyone has left.

We want to keep the races sustainable and that depends very much on volunteer time (I’m sure all of us have families who demand their share of weekend time). So we might keep a cut-off time like 7:30am to start and 8:30am to finish or something like that.

Since we start the registration process (which is essentially bib distribution) at 6:30 am and kick-off the first rider at 7:00am, with 30sec gaps we can get 60 riders going by 7:30am and still possibly get the results out by 8:30am so that everyone can go home and enjoy the rest of the Sunday with family or go for a longer ride.

Harsha Nagaraj, who completed Ironman Zurich last week, was at the race and did a fast recovery ride and shared his IM experience after the race! (Photo: Veloscope)

Comment on Handicap System:

As you know we are experimenting with a handicap system for this series at BAR. You can check this post for how we are implementing it. Like any system it won’t be perfect. There will be who will be sandbagging in a race. But for now we leave it to the rider to decide if he is cheating the system or cheating himself.

There are however riders who understand this and came to us asking us not to consider them for handicap system for the next race as they would get an unfair advantage in the next race having spent extra time on the road having missed the U-turn or some other reason.

We will be excluding them from the handicap system for the next race. That includes yours truly, as I wasn’t well and ended up not racing. So I know that any improvement from time from this race in the next won’t be indicating any actual performance improvements but will only show the fact that I raced.

With performance data that we are collecting in this series, we hopefully can come up with categories based on performance. Another easy to implement option is to have age categories. We’ll keep on listening, learning and refining what we do at BAR. So please keep the ideas coming.

What next?

Next weekend we get together at the same venue for a Team Time Trial. Minimum two riders and maximum three riders per team are allowed and the time of the second rider will be taken as the team time. So find a partner and form a team if you don’t already have one. Show up, race and have fun!

Event details here: Prologue TTT

Start: Emerald Isle Resort | U-Turn: Right after Confindent Amoon Resort | Finish: Opp Emerald Isle Resort

Distance: ~33km | Registration start: 6:30 am | Race Start: 7:00 am

We make it a point to start on time. Please help us to stay punctual.