Boba 4-Rider Team Time Trial
05 July 2011
Just like in the Tour the local boys organize a TTT for us to get out the weird looking aero gear and throw it down on a course that takes us from Helen Putnam Park down Chileno Valley and back toward Petaluma. This time the format was for just four riders (instead of the usual nine) and the finish was earlier, before the Albanian simuation crap roads of Spring Hill Rd. Time is taken on the finish of the third rider, so only one rider is expendable.
Lately for these team time trials I have to show up and try to get on a team that has an open spot. Sometimes I'm snubbed. It reminds me of the formative experience of asking girls out for prom in HS and getting repeatedly rejected.
Well because I've been riding well relative to previous years, this time I could savor being courted by three different teams. So as it turns out, the race before the race is to figure out who you are racing with.
Big boy Jonathan Teeter (Echelon) contacted me with only hours to go, asking me if I wanted in. Sure, I tell him. I know him to be amazingly strong. He said he also had some guy named Glen on our team. I didn't know a Glen but if Jonathan would vouch for him then I would be happy with that. We agreed to look around and try to pick up a fourth at the race.
Jonathan has been so damned strong in the Tues night races I was a little intimidated. So when I show up to the TTT, I find Jonathan with his funky acid green TT rig and ask him what Glen looks like so I can find him. "He'll be in team Bissell kit." Oh shit you mean Glen Mitchell? Former 2x Olympian and Bissell Pro? I was starting to get a little nervous.
Then we couldn't find a fourth guy for our team. This means no one was expendable. So our team consisted of a current raging bull, a former pro/olympian, and me. And I can't get dropped. That's a scary proposition.
All of us TTT freaks swarmed in the parking lot. We must have looked like a casting call for a cheap sci-fi movie where aliens land outside some jerkwater town. They let us go in one minute intervals. They start us and I'm too nervous to get my pedal in. Eventually, we're all doing even turns. The gusty crosswind making playthings of our front wheels. This can get problematic when one is steering with one's elbows and within centimeters of the rider in front.
In rotation, after I come off, Teeter would drill it every time. The hardest part of the TTT is dosing your effort so you give almost everything while you are pulling, but leaving just that little bit to hop back on when you get to the back. Teeter was not making this part any easier. Try going flat out for 40 seconds then sprinting for 15, settling back down to only 90% of your max, and then doing it again. And again.
Coming over and down the first big hill I got it to what I thought was back up to speed and then Teeter comes by me, way, way faster. Glen and I are spinning the eleven trying to stay with this guy. In just four minutes we catch the team that started a minute ahead of us.
The course turns right to follow Chileno. Teeter (in some sort of zone we can only speculate) goes straight. Glen and I yell at him as we turn right, on the course. But these damned sci-fi aero helmets are so loud no one can hear anything. Well Glen and I have a laugh over this, imagining Jonathan figuring out his mistake some 20km later, at the town of Marshall.
The team we passed earlier pass Glen and I back.
A couple sips of hummingbird food later and a check back yields an acid green shape coming up to us at warp speed. Oh shit, game back on!
Glen and I spend the rest of our TTT basically groveling behind the raging fuselage of Jonathan Teeter. I pulled maybe once or twice more. Not sure if Glen pulled any more at all.
During Jonathan's big effort we passed five to seven more teams. it was a big blur. My own condition ranged between "fairly exhausted" to "black out gone." Getting dropped was not an option. Though riding behind Glen I could consistently stay in the aero bars, my front wheel within 10 cm of his rear wheel. A real smooth and experienced rider like Glen allows you to ride closer, taking advantage of the increased aerodynamics.
We ended up in second place, only 40 seconds behind a four-man composite of espoirs/neo-pros. (Swift, Firemen, Cal-Giant). In my estimation Jonathan's wrong-way move cost us about a minute.
I figured Glen and I together, pulled for about only 15% of the time, Jonathan Teeter the balance. The boy is amazing! A freak of nature! Hopefully Glen will pick up this guy on the Bissell team for next year. I guess I was the unwitting bystander to his audition.
I felt a little sheepish and unworthy stepping up to claim the prize for second, as my job was essentially only to not get dropped. So the beer went to Jonathan, I was happy taking home equal measures of pride and humility.
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