Behind the Motors

I must have missed the email. You know, the one that said it was Time Trial Bike Day. After dragging myself out of bed and forcing my legs around in little circles long enough to get to the morning levee ride, I was hoping for a nice moderate paced ride. I'm planning on racing this weekend in Alexandria (as usual, it's Thursday and I haven't made any arrangements yet) and I'd just as soon not start out with sore legs. So my plan was to take the ride as easily as I could.

Within moments of arriving, however, I noticed a number of full-on TT bikes in attendance. Matt was on his P4 with the "water bottle" and deeeeep carbon wheels. Next to him was Rob on his lo-rider Giant Trinity. Then VJ rolled up on his electronic shifting Look 5-ninety something. A few more relatively pedestrian TT bikes lurked in the shadows. It was not looking like it would be an easy ride.

At least the pace didn't go ballistic from the start, but it didn't take long for the faster guys to filter up to the front. Mike C. rode off the front first, which stepped the pace up a notch. There were a few more surges, which opened some fairly big gaps. Eventually the speed got up into the range where the only guys regular road bikes brave enough to keep taking pulls were Woody, Brady, Tracy and maybe one or two others. It's not that it's all that hard to take the pull itself. The problem is getting back into the paceline afterwards.

So by the time we were halfway out the rotation on the front consisted of Matt, Rob and VJ. I somehow ended up next in line, but once the pace got really fast I just started letting them in in front of me. I wasn't getting any complaints and the three of them seemed happy with the ten-mile team time trial they were doing while the rest of us sat there behind them. At least they were nice and smooth, so for the most part it felt like a very long and fast motorpacing workout. This was about the best I could hope for without dropping off the back and riding by myself. Since there wasn't much wind and the pace up front was so smooth, it was fairly easy to sit there behind the motors spinning a 53x14 and waiting for the Destrehan bridge to appear.

I felt pretty well-done by the time I got home, but thanks to the relatively steady pace and lack of wind, my legs didn't seem to have suffered much damage. Soon after I got home, I heard about the Landis "revelations." Great. I can't really imagine what his motivations are, but I'm guessing there was cash involved. I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this than actual racing for the rest of the year.