One and done...

 

For those in the cycling community, the TTT stands for "Team Time Trial", an event where a group of riders work as a team to through a set course as fast as possible.

For those in the cycling community who have actually done a TTT, I put forth that the definition should be known as "Team Torture Testing", where you push yourself as hard as you can without shelling your teammates, knowing that they will be doing the same to you in a matter of moments.

My team for this endeavor were Bigwood, King, and BRat.  Basically PV Fast Twitch.  Our goals were to finish together, ride smoothly as possible, and have the fastest final K of all teams (a joke).. and if possible have fun.

We had practiced a number of times as a group and got a good feel for each others riding style, and cornering abilities and are roughly the same strength so we felt we had a good chance of accomplishing what we set out for.

The day started at Longbottom's to load up the caravan, and relive stories of my attempt to kill the entire team on Saturday by spooking a cat that was sitting on the side of the road.  We hit the road with a single stop in Albany for traditional pre-race cheeseburgers from McDonalds (seriously, we got cheeseburgers.  It's sprinter food.)

We arrived at the Allergy Factory staging area got setup and started our warm ups a bit late.  Our start time was 1 minute behind the real PV TT team, so with 8 people watching the clock we managed to get to the start line in time.  My start was a humorous showing of "how not to clip into your pedal" which was unfortunately captured on film by Mary-Kay Babcock.

aaugh n00b!

After we got settled in, we started our motoring.  I was slotted in behind BRat, which really started to hurt by Lap 3 when he was making monsterish pulls.  Bob trailed behind me.  I felt good on Lap 1.. 2 things started to hurt.  3 I questioned my sanity. Lap 4 we were all getting tired and our bike handling started to suffer.

I was probably the weakest rider of the group, but I can ride corners very well, so tried to time my pulls so I could pilot the team through one of the many corners that broke up the course then peel off.  By the 4th lap, patterns started emerging in our riding styles.  I found myself at the front in specific locations on almost every lap.  Unfortunately that meant I got dumped off in the head wind coming back all the time!

We came in as a group, just a bit spaced a part.  My hamstrings pretty much seized up about 200m after the finish line and I was barely able to get back to the finish line let alone ride a cool down with the team.  My skin suit was crusted with salt.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon laughing with the other PV folks who were down there and trying not to cramp up in the increasing heat.  The journey home had us swing through Carl Jr's, which Bob swears is the official sprinter recovery food, and was punctuated with sneezes, groans of soreness and lots of laughter.

It was a sadistic sort of fun, and a good way to finish my career in the world of Time Trialing. (Yes.. I'm done with TT's.  Anyone want a bike?)