Musical Saddles

The five o'clock alarm launched me out of my much-needed slumber and soon I was out in the dark, clamping the roof rack to the car and loading up for Saturday's Team Time Trial. I picked up Roy right on time, and by the time we were an hour down the road I figured out there was still time for a stop at the Starbucks in Gonzalez. It would have been perfect except that they were out of brown sugar. Once we arrived at the start of the time trial we needed to track down our two teammates. As we were waiting around the registration desk we learned that the organizer had forgotten to bring along any USAC release forms, so everything was delayed for half an hour or so while some unlucky soul made a frantic trip to the nearest copy machine. At some point during this time my teammate Francis showed up looking to get onto a team. Not wanting to kick anyone off of our team at the last minute, he and I cajoled another team that was missing a rider to take him on. A few minutes after they registered we discovered that our own last-minute addition had unknowingly committed to two different NOBC teams! So now we were short one rider again, and it was too late to get Francis back. It was starting to resemble a game of Musical Saddles! So Roy, Branden and I are standing around trying to figure out what to do when Branden finds an orphaned triathlete who's looking for a team. We finally get registered and head off to get in a few miles riding together to see if we're liable to knock each other down or not. As it turned out, everyone was nice and stable and smooth, so no worries there.

We arrived at the start right on time. As the starter is giving us the ten seconds to go warning, the course monitor behind us is announcing that one of the early teams is about to come through the start/finish at the end of its first of three laps. So we end up starting just as one of the Masters teams comes flying past. Adding to the confusion, one of their riders drops off at this point and as they slow down to figure out what's going on, we pass them and get up to speed, which in this case was around 27 mph. It was a very windy day out on the course, and with the early tailwind we were soon rolling at 27-30 mph. Over the next five miles or so, the team we'd passed got its act together (sans the rider who dropped off) and we played leapfrog a few times until they finally started to gradually pull away. It worked out nicely, though, because for the next lap and a half they hovered from 15-45 seconds ahead, providing some nice motivation. Unfortunately, we lost Roy around the end of lap 1. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised since he was the biggest rider and also the only one without a TT bike or even aero clip-on bars. The three of us who were left, though, were pretty smooth and I could already tell we'd have a respectable time. I'll admit I was pushing the pace a bit every time I'd come to the front, but Branden and Sean were riding really well and handling the changes in speed smoothly.

The last half of each lap was mostly headwind, and as we neared the end of lap 2 we could see the 3-rider Midsouth Masters team still about 45 seconds up ahead, and another 4-rider Midsouth team that they were about to pass. Well, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but around when they went past the 4-rider team there was a crash and Jaro took a pretty hard fall. Since they had only three riders, the other two had to turn around and get Jaro back on the bike. Of course, we came blasting through the area while they were still scattered all over the place, and since there was a support vehicle coming the other way we had to slow down to 22 or so as we passed. They were only a few miles from their finish, although we still had a whole lap to go, so Jaro toughed it out and finished. Looking at the results, I'd have to say that fall almost certainly cost them the gold medal in the 35+ race as well as what would have been the 2nd fastest time of the day, because we were a good 45 sec. behind when it happened, yet we finished that lap well ahead of them.

Our team kept the pressure on pretty well for the last lap, finishing with a respectable time that was 4th fastest for the day (OK, it would have been 5th fastest but for the crash) and would have gotten us silver medals in the Cat. 1,2 race if Sean hadn't been racing on a one-day license. So I thought that result was pretty good for such a ad-hoc team.

Interestingly, the women had the largest number of teams today. Courtney's team posted the fastest time, but like ours they didn't all have annual licenses so they didn't qualify for the medals. The full-NOBC women's team came in 3rd, so I think they took home the silver!

All-in-all, I really enjoyed the race. Next year, though, we'll need to start organizing the NOBC teams a lot earlier!