MIDSOUTH MASTER CYCLING CLUB

Rosanne's women's team would do two laps on the course (21 miles) while our other teams would each do three laps (32 miles).  This is the same flat River Road course that host many of the local time trials.  The wind is normally a factor but today it would be relatively light with just a headwind on the last few miles of each lap.

I enjoy the team time trials but I know today that I am going to be the guy suffering on the team.  The other three guys are all strong and Mark and Ed have especially been ringing up some strong time trial efforts at recent stage races.  If no rider is really hurting then you just aren't going fast enough.  We figure our rotation order based on size with me behind Mark and ahead of Ed with Jerry behind him.  We take a warm up lap before the race at a steady pace doing 30 - 45 second pulls at the front and things go smooth.

Our plan is to start the first lap fairly easy and pick up the pace on the remaining two laps.  After making the first turn at 1.5 miles our pace stayed 29 - 31 mph but we all kept a steady rotation.  As we moved into the headwind on the back section, I started to feel the effort and my heart rate was getting into the red zone during each of my pulls.  As Jerry rotated by me I told him that I wasn't feeling too good and he said he was hurting as well.  Ed and Mark were looking strong.

We started the second lap and changed direction out of the headwind.  Ed pushed the speed back up and we again fell into our rotation.  Shortly before we made the turn I felt a sharp thump on the back wheel.  You should not be feeling things hitting your back wheel during a time trial and I knew this wasn't good.  I heard the sounds of carbon hitting pavement and I saw Ed sliding into the oncoming lane as I turned around.  Fortunately a car coming at us was going slow enough to avoid any major issues.  Jerry was behind Ed and managed to avoid going down.  Ed said later that he was wiping some stuff off his face and took his eyes off the road just long enough to hit my wheel.

We had one of the two big motors for the team on the ground and over 20 miles left in the race.  I knew I wasn't feeling super strong with the pace we had been doing and Jerry said he may have been hurting as well.  I suggested that if Ed can get up fairly quickly that we should wait for him.  I stopped to make sure my disc was still on straight and not rubbing a brake but  still didn't see Ed up on his bike after starting again.  We continued to roll up the road and finally saw Ed up and chasing back to us.  We covered about 3/4 of a mile in 3 minutes before we got going again.  Ed came by hard with an adrenalin rush as you would expect and we had slow him down a bit as we got rolling again.  It looked like his skin suit was still in tact but after the race I would see that he had quite a bit of road rash.  I would also see that the shoe covers I loaned him were in shreds. 

As were starting to get back in the flow, Mark took a long pull at around 31 mph and it put me into the red zone just trying to hold on.  I started skipping pulls trying to recover at the back before taking a short pull at the front.  I tried a few times to get off Mark's wheel and behind someone with more draft.  This seemed to help some but I wound up his wheel quite a bit more before we would finish.  In hindsight, we may have been better off having someone stronger on Mark's wheel and me tucked in behind Ed or Jerry who provided more draft.

By the start of the third lap I was hurting pretty good and my heart rate was staying high.  A few gaps opened during the third lap and it really killed me to close even the smallest ones.  As we moved into the headwind the last time I just kept going deeper and deeper into the red.  The guys were digging to keep the pace up and I was barely holding on before quickly pulling off the front.  About 2 miles from the finish I missed the back wheel in the pack.  I wasn't even sure who it was but told them I was gone.  I was unlikely to make it back to the front anyway and since time was based on the third rider, it wasn't too big a deal.  They would continue on to finish the 32 mile course in 1:10:21 which was second place in the Master 35+ and fifth fastest overall.

Our other riders did well also.  Rosanne's team took first place in the Women's category and our Master 45+ team finished second place in that category.  The results were nice but I am still more impressed with the teams support of the event fielding 9 riders.