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4/19/2007 - TOUR DE GEORGIA STAGE 4: Time Trial

This morning we woke up at a Travelodge truck stop just west of Knoxville, TN. I must admit that sleeping on a real mattress while roadtripping is quite a comfort. A self-inflating camping pad does not compare.

It was a little over 2 hours of driving to reach Chickamauga, GA, the start of today's individual time trial. As we reached our destination town we noticed several vehicles with bikes on racks and passengers wearing cycling jerseys. This simplified finding the start of the race as we just followed these vehicles.

A parking spot was waiting for us near the start of the stage. One of the cars we had followed pulled in next to us and we learned that they were riding towards Lookout Mountain. They said Nick A Jack road was the place to be. The riders would be suffering up this steep part of the course.

It's nice to have your hotel with you. We put up the window blinders and took turns changing into our cycling clothes in the back of the van. We deployed our bikes and set off on the time trial course.

The course was pretty obvious with marshalls and barricades at most intersections. Cyclists were heading our direction as well as some riders who had apparently ridden the course and were heading back to the start. These were all amateurs by the way, we had not yet seen any team buses or pros.

About 7 miles into the route we crossed some railroad tracks and Hwy 193. It had been flat to rolling up to this point but the climb up Nick A Jack Road was about to begin. It was an average grade of 9% for about 2 miles.

As we rounded a tight right hand corner before the final bit of the climb I said to Ryan, between gulps of air, that this corner would be a good vantage point. We unclipped and started to move on the grassy shoulder.

Before I had dismounted my bike I looked up to see three Discovery Channel jerseys pass by. It was George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer, and Tom Danielson warming up on the route! Ryan and I must have been doing a good job of pacing them up the climb because they sure weren't breathing very hard <insert sarcastic laughter here>.

For the next several hours we watched the 130 or so riders pass by on their super fancy, super expensive time trial bikes. Well, most of them were on TT bikes while some were on road bikes due to the uphill nature of the time trial.

As I had hoped, the riders reached this 90 degree right hand turn and cut to the inside for the most direct path. They also looked up the hill at this point to see how much closer they were to the top of the climb. This made for some up close spectating (is that a word?) and some in-your-face pictures.

Due to the odd breakaway that picked up something like 25 minutes on the field the day before, the "big names" did not come last in this time trial. I had not heard about the previous day's stage until we were talking with some other fans today. It was somewhat disappointing to have had such a decisive break that excluded the top guys, but that's racing.

In the end, Levi Leipheimer won the time trial by a pretty good margin. When Levi, David Millar and Dave Zabriskie passed by they were looking very strong and passed by with authority. It turns out Levi was faster than second place finisher Dave Z by 41 seconds! Millar finished sixth, 1:47 back.

Discovery Channel's Janez Brajkovic, part of the big break from the previous day, wore yellow with CSC's Christian Vandevelde 12 seconds back. Despite winning the time trial, Leipheimer was in 13th place 26:26 behind the race leader.

For more coverage of the time trial stage, here is the Cyclingnews report: Tour de Georgia Stage 4.

We thought it would be an easy cruise back to Chickamauga but the signs and marshalls for the race were gone so we were on our own for finding the roads. Things never look quite the same in reverse and we ended up making a wrong turn. But, so did the Mavic car and we realized when they had turned around and were coming back towards us that we were on the wrong road.

With the bikes back in the van and some gas added to the tank we drove back north to Chattanooga. Then it was east through a bit of South Carolina before we turned south back into Georgia. We were aiming for Brasstown Bald, tomorrow's Tour de Georgia destination.

Last year Katie and I had stayed at Trackrock Campground and found it to be a very nice place that is within a 10 minute drive of Brasstown. Ryan and I pulled into Trackrock and parked our van in a nice flat camp site. We cooked up some beef stew that I had made back home, took showers in the newly renovated shower house, and sat around a camp fire at the end of the day. I was sporting a nice sunburned head from our outdoor afternoon activities and Ryan was shining some pink as well.

I knew from last year that tomorrow's stage would be the most exciting of our trip. After 100 miles of racing the guys would climb 3 miles on the slopes of Brasstown Bald, the highet mountain in Georgia. The average grade is 14% and it spikes to 27% in places. We would be at the summit to see them grunting out the last 50 meters.