Monday, September 10, 2007

Team Time Trial

4 men, 4 bikes, 40 kilometers, 10, 728 heart beats(at least for me)

Team Doppler Effect was comprised of: Pascal Bonaventure, John Genovese, Daryl Oya, and myself.

We did turn in a respectable time of 59 minutes, 37 seconds. That time works out to be 25+ mph. 25.01 to be exact.

The first lap went well, with all 4 riders taking pulls, the second lap also seemed to be going smoothly until John announced that we had dropped Daryl. I was shocked to hear this, mostly because I expected to be the one to get dropped. We decided quickly not to wait, and to just press on with three, the minumum needed to finish the race. A quick prayer was said to the flat tire gods, and one to the bonk gods for good measure.

Laps 2 through 4 were fairly uneventful, Pascal and John both took longer pulls than me, and also took all the pulls on the headwind side of the island. This is standard procedure for the team leader to be saved for the end of the race, just ask Lance.

About halfway through lap 5 I was certain I was dying. I glanced at my heart rate, and saw that it was at 193, which is technically, 4 beats above my theoretical maximum. We slowed to around 20 mph for around a minute as I slowly dropped to a sustainable heartrate. After this break, we pretty much hammered through to the finish, sprinting the final kilometer at around 32mph.

I believe that the mark of a good time trial is when you have snot dripping out of your nose after you finish, and you don't care. By this measure, I think we had a good TT.

All in all, a positive experience, next year I would like to ride with a more evenly matched team so that I can pull a little more. . .Lynch, I am looking in your direction.

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