Velominati Super Prestige: Elite Women’s World Championship ITT 2013

Kristin Armstrong en route to the Olympic Gold in the women’s ITT.

There is something about a time trial that lets you go spelunking in undiscovered caverns of The Cave. Contort your body into the sleekest position you can, make the bike as uncomfortable as possible, and then rev your cardiovascular system up to the anaerobic threshold for as long as possible. Its food for legend.

Being a diesel helps, churning the legs over under sustained effort with little variation in effort. Being the perfect amount of dumb doesn’t hurt either – you have to be just smart enough to be to push yourself to your limits without chasing someone, but not so smart that you realize it would hurt less to go easier. If I was made for a discipline, its this one.

It’s September, the leaves are starting to turn, and the VSP keeps chugging along, this time with the VVomen’s World Championship ITT. Stay tuned for a busy week of events as we’ll be doing both the Road Race and IIT for both the Men and the VVomen.

If you can find the start list, study it. Then the study the stars, tea leaves, and anything else you believe will make your picks not suck.

Good luck.

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frank

The founder of Velominati and curator of The Rules, Frank was born in the Dutch colonies of Minnesota. His boundless physical talents are carefully canceled out by his equally boundless enthusiasm for drinking. Coffee, beer, wine, if it’s in a container, he will enjoy it, a lot of it. He currently lives in Seattle. He loves riding in the rain and scheduling visits with the Man with the Hammer just to be reminded of the privilege it is to feel completely depleted. He holds down a technology job the description of which no-one really understands and his interests outside of Cycling and drinking are Cycling and drinking. As devoted aesthete, the only thing more important to him than riding a bike well is looking good doing it. Frank is co-author along with the other Keepers of the Cog of the popular book, The Rules, The Way of the Cycling Disciple and also writes a monthly column for the magazine, Cyclist. He is also currently working on the first follow-up to The Rules, tentatively entitled The Hardmen. Email him directly at rouleur@velominati.com.

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View Comments

Nate says:

Sep 25 2013 at 9:56 am

@frank I think I see @eightzero's hand raised.
VeloVita says:

Sep 25 2013 at 1:53 pm

OK fellow pirated internet stream watchers, I could use a little technical assistance/guidance - since Saturdays are my day to watch the munchkin, as my VMH works weekends, I need to come up with a viable and reliable way to watch the cyclingfans.com/procyclinglive.com linked streams of races in a mobile fashion since I can no longer just lock myself in my mancave in the basement and watch them on my iMac. Lately I've tried opening the feeds using the Skyfire web browser app on my iPhone 5, but more often than not there is some pop up that prevents the app from recognizing that there is flash video to be played and to my knowledge there is no way to close out the pop-up ads on an iPhone to get to the video. I'm assuming that an iPad would have the same issues (if I'm wrong, someone please correct me) so I was considering another tablet - something like a Kindle HD that can actually play flash video natively. Does anyone have any ideas/experiences as to what would be the best way to go about getting my weekend race stream fix?
Steampunk says:

Sep 25 2013 at 3:08 pm

@xyxax

@Steampunk

This was in VeloNews yesterday. Maybe it gets indirectly at your question. Has the team hit a low-Vaughter mark?

Thanks"”that's interesting, although it doesn't really describe the decline itself (only that they will likely continue to be mediocre).
eightzero says:

Sep 25 2013 at 5:59 pm

@frank

@eightzero, @Chica

@eightzero

@frank, I'm kinda curious if your magic spreadsheet can produce a VSP leader board for the femme races?

Ooh... you know, I'm curious to see that, too. Great idea!

Its not a fucking spreadsheet! Its a database and there's lot of complicated technical stuff going on here!

Now that we cleared up how sophisticated the whole system is...we don't actually track if its a mens or a women's event because we're so egalitarian in our coding around here. But I can do it without too much trouble, just a matter of prioritizing it against all the other work in the queue.

So...what you're saying is that our enjoyment of all things cycling would be enhanced if there was some mechanism to afford to pay a dedicated worker...and such funds could come from someone with an interest in professional cycling that ...oh...had a previous career that resulted in a personal bankroll that would help her enjoy professional cycling...

You *knew* it had to come to this. Eventually.
frank says:

Sep 26 2013 at 12:00 pm

@eightzero