Three People

Thanks to a start time scheduled at the relatively civilized hour of 9:30 am, Ed N. and I didn't leave for Baton Rouge this morning until around 7, and since the first riders didn't actually start until 10:00, we arrived in plenty of time. Today was the Raising Cane's Racing annual 3-man Time Trial on River Road, just down the river from Baton Rouge. It wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I finally got my 3-man team together. With veteran Mike Lew on the hook I was then able to get Dave S. on board for the short 21.5 mile effort. I ended up spending most of Friday afternoon and evening posting the final Rouge-Roubaix results and updating the LAMBRA Cycling Cup Series rankings.


Arriving at the start area I could see that there was a pretty good turnout for this year's race. There were lots of clubs represented. They were mostly clustered together in little groups all up and down the road, pinning on numbers and assembling bikes and generally getting their acts together. For myself, I had just bolted on the clip-ons as usual. In fact, Dave was the only one of us with an actual Time Trial bike. In classic fashion, Mike showed up with his regular road bike. I figured this arrangement would probably serve to balance us out pretty well.


We were one of the earlier groups to start, and I was glad to see how smoothly we got rolling. As planned, Mike took the first pull, smoothly rolling us up to speed. By the time I came to the front we had a little tailwind and 27 mph was feeling way too easy. We flew through the first turn like we were on rails, and then, gradually, we started to pick up a little headwind. The group was rotating really pretty smoothly, although as always I was kind of impatient with the pace. Being the smallest rider of the group, I was getting full recovery at the back, and although we were seeing mostly 26-28 mph on the computer I knew we needed just a little more speed. The other guys handled my surges politely, though, and I started taking longer pulls to compensate. As we had planned, Dave, who was the biggest of the group, was taking shorter pulls and keeping the speed steady. We passed our 1-minute group pretty quickly, and I felt we were rolling well. Soon after we started the second lap I could see Mike starting to struggle a bit when he was on the front, and about half-way through that lap Dave said he was about done. I encouraged him to stay with us as long as he could, and in fact he didn't finally drop off until we were maybe three or four miles from the finish.


Right around that time the Herring masters riders, led by the Great Balded One, passed us. I saw Mike glance over at them and then he started pouring on the coals, bringing us up a couple of mph. Soon we were passing the Herring guys. Of course, they couldn't let that stand, and as I was starting my pull I heard them coming up alongside us again. I lifted our pace just a bit more to match theirs and for a moment the two teams were side-by-side. Then I heard Mike call out behind me. He had been trying to get back on my wheel just as I'd accelerated and now he was coming off the back, so although it would have been great fun to have had a little drag race for the last mile or two, we had to back off. The finish line came up quickly and we finished about 15 seconds behind the Herring team which had itself started two minutes behind us. My computer showed an average speed of almost 27 mph, which I thought was pretty respectable. We ended up 10th overall out of maybe 30 teams; 3rd among the master 45+ teams. I guess I can live with that.



Before I left I copied the admittedly incomplete results spreadsheet to my trusty Swiss Army Flashdrive so I could post something when I got back home.

This was one of those team time trials that I really enjoyed, and as is often the case there's still a little voice in the back of my head saying, "You could have gone faster." Yeah, well maybe...