Team Practice

It's 6 a.m. Half-asleep, I'm reluctantly bolting on the aero bars in preparation for a little team time trial practice session. Charlie wanted to get started at 6:45 so that we would be safely ahead of the regular Giro ride, so Jaro, Steve and I meet him at the usual Giro start location near the lakefront, ready for an early start. There's another team TT group already out on the road, so our idea wasn't unique. Jaro is taking his first ride on a new TT bike. The idea this morning is to get in a little experience riding with each other in order to try and smooth out the pace and make sure everyone is on the same page for the race next week. My legs feel awful, and I don't know why.

We did a number of stretches of fairly fast paceline, interspersed with some easy sections to talk about what was working and what wasn't. As usual, the main topic of discussion centered around which unlucky person would have to be on my wheel -- not because I'm fast, but because I'm small. In fact, today I was really hurting and every time Steve would ramp up the pace, I would end up slowing it back down. Meanwhile, Jaro was distinctly uncomfortable on his new TT bike, and we talked a while about what might help in that regard. It's one of those Cervelo full-out TT bikes with the reversible seat post. I suggested that, for the time being, he might want to set the bike up more like his regular road bike.

As we head out to the turnaround at Venetian Isles, there is a dark and menacing sky off to our right. For a while, I think it will miss us, but soon after the turnaround we feel the first drops of rain. For a while the rain is light and I think perhaps we won't get drenched, but a few minutes later, the drops are big enough to sting as they hit our arms and my shoes are filling up with water. The rest of the way back was in and out of rain. By the time I got home, I was still pretty wet, and I'm hoping my shoes are dry by tomorrow because Charlie is picking me up at 5:15 a.m. so we can meet a small group (I don't know who will be there) across the lake for a 7 a.m. start. I sure hope my legs fell better by then.