It was high noon on Friday when we rolled into Athens. Gabe, Andy and I had spent the previous day driving down to Charlotte, North Carolina, where we picked Ryan up from the airport to complete our four-person squad for the USACrits Speed Week. Another few hours in the minivan brought us to Athens, Georgia, where the series will kick off with the Athens Twilight criterium on Saturday night.

Athens is a notoriously hard and aggressive race. Good starting position is so important that they created a separate event on Friday, the Athens Twilight Grid Qualifiers, just to determine the starting order. The qualifiers consist of a six kilometer simulated time trial on stationary trainers positioned on a stage. The trainers determine the power output of the rider and use it to calculate their speed on a pre-programmed course. The heats are spread out over the day, with 8 riders competing at a time.

I was optimistic heading into the qualifiers. Using a simulated time trial on trainers is done for no other races because, well, it’s a bit goofy. But while I may not be the most experienced, most aggressive, or most brilliantly tactical bike racer, I can put some power into the pedals. After spending an hour warming up with Andy, who was placed in the same heat as I was, I made my way to the stage to get set up for the qualifier. They input the weight of each rider and bike into the computrainers, so I grabbed my bike and stepped on their analog bathroom scale. The guy weighing me in said “207 pounds…is that right?” I assured him that that was probably about right. I’m a big boy.

There’s not much interesting to say about a time trial on a trainer. It was hot, hard, and miserable. I spent the first couple of minutes in third place in my heat, but then took over the lead and went on to win decisively. So decisively, in fact, that I had put up the third best time of the day. The eight fastest riders are invited back to duke it out on the same simulated time trial in a final round held at 9:00 Friday evening. With only a couple of heats after mine, I was almost guaranteed a spot.

So immediately after finishing my time trial, I had to start planning for another unexpected race only a few hours away. I spun around a little bit, took a shower, and headed out with the guys to Mellow Mushroom for some pizza. But only hours before another race, I spent much of dinner staring longingly at the pizza, as I limited myself to only two slices. It was strange getting ready for round two. It was getting dark, I had already raced that day, and I wasn’t surrounded by people getting prepared at the same time. It was a tough sell to convince my body that it should be getting ready to pedal very, very hard.

A bit after 8:00 I set off through the darkening streets of Athens to move my legs a little bit. After a warmup abbreviated by a poorly-timed mechanical issue, I made my way to the stage. While the heats in the afternoon were held in front a small audience, things were very different for the evening. The street was packed in front of the stage. There were food vendors, a live band, and, I kid you not, a trapeze artist. My seven competitors and I got our bikes up on stage and hooked up to the computrainers. Then they led us away so that they could call us up with official introductions, complete with girls to escort us onto the stage.

The competition itself went much like the one in the afternoon, only with a thousand people screaming their heads off while we were doing it. The slight breeze that had kept me cool in the afternoon was gone in the evening, so I was pouring sweat by the end of the effort. Again it was hot, hard, and miserable, and I ended up 5th in the competition. I can’t say that it was much fun, but it was a great opportunity to represent the team in front of an enthusiastic crowd, and it earned me a callup to the front row in the following day’s Athens Twilight criterium, in front of a much larger and even more enthusiastic crowd. Not bad for 15 minutes of work.