Alameda Runners – Get After It!

The individual time trial is known as the ‘race of truth’ for a reason, with each rider needing to face his own weaknesses and overcome all challenges without the help of teammates in the peloton.

Some riders seemingly can destroy the ground beneath them while riding a time trial, while other riders can’t generate the watts needed to find success.

The Tour of California’s 19.6-mile individual time trial (ITT) finished with a brutal 1.7-mile, 950’ climb in San Jose, averaging a brutal 10.6 percent.  Driving up Metcalf Road before the riders came through yielded a steep, long intense uphill that each rider would suffer up.

Tejay van Garderen completely blew apart the ITT by winning in 48 minutes, 52 seconds, which was 23 seconds faster than Vacansoleil-DCM’s Lieuwe Westra and 28 seconds faster than Garmin-Sharp’s Rohan Dennis.

van Garderen is the true US cycling talent of the future, as he has all around cycling skills, a great personality with the fans and press, and is the first generation post-Lance fall out.  While most of the well-known US riders have either tested positive – or were strongly implicated in doping – van Garderen can give us hope.