I picked up aham Sunday morning for the Team Time Trial put on by ABR out in Herscher, IL just West of Kankakee. It's good times just to be hanging with someone like aham on a nice mroning on the way to go ride bikes.
On the trip we discussed my mistakes with inadequate warmup before events. When we got there it was about what I expected to see....a superhero convention in the middle of a small town surrounded by corn fields.
We were outgunned and knew it, but we brought our biggest cans of whoop-ass and decided to give it the old college try. I hit the trainer and tried to work up a sweat. aham hit the road with my set of wheels on his rig (a way to try to lighten his gear a bit).
With some flotbots playing from starship psimet I tried to put on my "race face" - which BTW kind of resembles my "I have to take a big crap" face. "Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE! Must beat SOMEONE!" became my mantra.
Point of note here. This would be my second TT ever. The first was early this spring when I slapped on some clip-ons on to my road rig and went for a ride. I was decimated. I beat one guy in the 60+ category and at least one "Junior" under 16 racer. That was it. They might as well have handed me a pair of panties at registration with my number and said, "just put these on instead. It will save us all a lot of time and effort and the result will be the same."
I needed blood.
aham and I rode a small section off course in a last minute prep then took our place in staging. Staging is fun...NOT! It's not like other races where you line up, milling around, getting a little nervous then get a 2 second speach and you're off. No...instead TT staging is where you get to line up and listen to "high-tech" timing devices make beeps and count down every 30 seconds or so. It SOOOOOOO adds to the drama.
To top things off we have a set of juniors going off in front of us (3 spots - 3 minutes). I looked at aham and told him I felt like saying, "good luck. You better not beat me or I'll kick your ass after this is done" to them, but alas there were other supervising adults present.
Even better one of our Tuesday Night Group Ride resident aliens was lined up in a team about 6 back from us. UGHHHH!!!!
Alien2: "Hey psimet!"
psimet: "Hey alien2. So how far are you back from us?"
Alien2: "6 minutes."
psimet: "Oh....so we should expect to see you somewhere around 12 minutes in? You'll be going twice as fast right?"
Alien2: "HAHAHAHAHAHA...yeah...right....well....maybe. :) "
psimet:
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
Every minute another set of ridicuously expensive carbon wheels went whooshing off the line.
"Riders 9:19!"
A couple of "bent racers". Really freaky fast on the ground recumbent bicycles with more carbon and technology on them than on a top end race car.
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
"Riders 9:20!"
A couple of dudes messing with a last minute bike problem. I'm resisting my urge to help out last minute knowing it will throw off my mo-jo.
"Just a brake problem. I don't need those anyway. Hahahahahah."
I feel like I want to vomit.
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
"Riders 9:21! OK Good...team psimet and aham? Good. OK you will hear a first beep at 30 seconds. The next series will be for the last 5 seconds. Go on the long tone. You have 2 laps. 50k total. Come by this start house to begin the second lap. Watch for riders. Finish in the <30> straight behind us. just keep going straight - don't take the turn the second time. Number? Good. Have fun guys."
Beep, Beep, Beep, Beep, Booooooo
Whooosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh......
......pain.
I had put a flimsy "gameplan" in place with aham at the start. i told him I always get pumped up at the start of stuff and will go out harder than I would like. Without being warmed up I tend to go hard until I pop and then recover for a bit until I hit my stride so to speak. I did just that.
aham was looking like he was already hurting. I was gapping him when coming to the front to pull. I would sit up to slow down and he would rocket past me putting himself right back in front. Result was that neither of us got a good break for a few minutes. Then we settled into a 1 minute rotation.
We passed the juniors near the end of the first leg of the first lap. YAY!!! 1 mental victory achieved. I knew we were going to get passed soon and often. I don't think aham was ready for how soon or often. There were some beasts out there. I think we were 2-3 teams down just on the first leg.
Second leg was a fast one. I was able to get in position and make the equipment work the way it was supposed to. I kept seeing 25-26mph when I was looking down. aham and I were hoping to finish with 23 for the run.
gotta get home...I'll finish this later....
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