a crit on TT bikes – cross-blog post
Posted on September 7, 2008
This weekend I teamed up with 3 other guys from the team and we rolled the Fiesta Island TTT.
I was confident that we would have a good showing. Our practice runs were pretty good and I think everyone was in pretty decent shape for the event.
I got to the island at 5:40. I had planed for it to be a 5:30 arrival, but I had to walk an extra block around my neighborhood in order to get “things going” – you know… you grab a cup of coffee and go for a leisure walk and just get “things” moving… old trick from an ex-teammate. Always works and before you know it you are running to the toilet. Alright, back to Fiesta…
I got a pretty decent warm up and we were all ready on time, which is always nice.
We got off pretty slow, but this is good as we want the laps to get faster and faster. And slow was only the first 300 meters. So we started and got our rotations going. There was a pretty strong tailwind on the back stretch so we were going pretty good in that section.
Come the first corner and bam, we lost a guy. I was leading into the corner and as in practice I was expecting everyone to come on the inside. Problem was the corner was wet and it LOOKED slippery… so everyone went wide and the last guy got pushed into the dirt. So we sat up and waited for him to get out of the sand and sprint to the 3 of us. That sucked because not only did we loose time waiting we lost a good match for the next 2-3 laps.
So the 3 of us took some extra pulls to make sure Ron was OK. After that the rotations started to go good again, UNTIL we came across the cyclovet guys AND the SWAMIS guys… We literally dragged race the cyclovets trio for about 3 laps. We were up, then they were up and it stayed that way for the remainder of out TTT. We passed some other teams and at one point were were 4 teams across. I honestly think we might have hurt ourselves a little bit OR, OR, OR we might have helped the cyclovet guys… – oh, oh, I started some shit now….
I KNEW that as soon as I pulled through Josh (an ex-teammate of mine in rowing) that he would NEVER EVER let me stay ahead… I knew right there that we would be in trouble and so it happened.
We finished in 53:25. I honestly thought we were good for 52 even. We got beat by a mixed team. We won the 140+ and we had the 3rd fastest time of the day, but still… Wish I would had my stuff together. I really really suffered through this one. Lap 2 I honestly thought about just letting it go. I dangled on the back after taking some pulls and I did not know how long I could do that for.
It was a nightmare and I vowed to NEVER EVER AGAIN do another TT. I was destroyed. My body hurt and my soul got crushed.
TTT by the numbers:
Average HR: 180, 27.7mph average speed, 53:25 total time – pretty windy conditions, wet tarmac and some serious whining on my part.
BTW, I am doing the next Fiesta Island TT… should be WAAAAAAAAAAY better..NOT
» Filed Under Cycling
Comments
Leave a Reply
