Guest Race Report TTT State Championships

Team 20/20 Fuel Burning it up !

Race Report from the Washington State Team Time Trail Championships.
Tim was our guest writer. Thanks to him for letting us into his head...

Our team was the same as last year: Brad “I only let my legs explode after we cross the finish line”, Sam “the only thing I own are the tires”, John “at least they’re not making me try to draft behind Brad”, and Tim “I’m hypoxic but still try to do math”. Our primary goals were to beat our time from last year and look moderately competent when we passed Janet taking pictures.

The weather at the course in Elma was misty-grey overcast, slightly breezy, and surprisingly chilly after such a nice week. We took off at 9:24, had a nice steady start, and settled into our rotation, trying not to go too hard out of the gate. We were the ninth team on the road and started seeing teams heading back the other direction about a third of the way into the ride. Up to the halfway point, our rotations were pretty consistent and steady. About 45-50 minutes into the ride, we caught and passed the Byrne team which started 3 min ahead of us (definitely one of the highlights of the day). The suffering then began in earnest for the final stretch home. Heading into the last mile, we could see our “six minute” team about 45 seconds ahead of us which – in the rare moments we could see straight at this point in the race – was a nice final carrot. The last half mile is a slight downhill and we goaded Sam to give us a final “death pull” as we headed towards the last 90 degree turn. With all of us at our limits, we came apart just a bit at this point, splitting into two groups of two – but managed to get three of us back together for the last turn and 200m sprint to the finish line. Immediately after passing the finish line, Brad pulled to the side as his legs cramped from the last sprint and the rest of us slowly spun down the road waiting for our heart rates to drop back down to a level where we could talk again.

The results: we beat our time from last year by 1:25, finishing in 1:10:16 over the 32 mile course – an average speed of 27.4 mph. This was good enough for the silver medal (for the third year in a row), behind a bunch of guys from Wenatchee all of whom had very very tricked out TTT bikes and beat us by 1:45. We were 2:30 ahead of the third place team and 4:20 ahead of the boys from Byrne. All in all, a great - though thoroughly exhausting – effort which was rewarded with beers upon returning to Seattle.

Team 20/20 got extra credit for giving assistance to the Cycle U Cat 4/5 team that crashed badly when their lead rider rode off the road into gravel. He went down, taking down the rest of the team. One rider went to the hospital with a broken collarbone and another was badly scraped with a ring finger that will clearly need some tendon surgery. Evo Davo – who was out on the course with Janet taking photos – came to their aid and transported two of the riders and bikes back to the start area where Sam helped clean up the wounds.