Phinney looks within, comes up big in Winston-Salem

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (VN) — BMC Pro Team’s Taylor Phinney won his third U.S. Pro national time trial championship on Friday outside of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In truth, he crushed it, besting Rally Cycling’s Tom Zirbel — a former national TT champion — by well over a minute. But to hear Phinney tell the story, the 48km out-and-back course was as much a battle of the mind as one of the legs.

“At the turnaround, I thought I was having my worst day ever,” Phinney confided when greeted by teammate Brent Bookwalter after the race. “Truly. The worst. Ever.”

The race marked Phinney’s first return to nationals since a disastrous outing in 2014, when the 25-year-old Boulder, Colorado native badly broke his left leg on a descent of Chattanooga’s Lookout Mountain. Since the accident, he’s become more introspective, which, for a pro cyclist, comes with both pros and cons.

“That was just the weirdest mind game,” Phinney said of Friday’s race against the clock. As I was doing my warm-up, I was thinking, ‘I don’t really feel very good.’ But you sort of push through that and you think, ‘Don’t listen to yourself, it’s 7:45 in the morning, and warm-ups are there for a reason.’ I started out pretty conservatively, and I was feeling good at first. But then, by the first turn I was already thinking, ‘Oh man, this is a lot more painful than I want it to be right now.’

It was then that the doubts set in.

“Honestly going into the turnaround on the second lap, I just felt like I was soft pedaling. I had completely given up. That’s what I …

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