Tonight's team time trial took us to Watopia for four laps of the Two Bridges Loop, about 18 miles total, with a short sharp climb on each lap. We were hoping to field four riders, but Michael has been plagued by internet outages for the last couple of days and couldn't make it, so it was just Melissa, Shawn, and me at the starting line.

Our plan was to target 3.7 w/kg for our pulls, and we started out very close to that pace, turning in our fastest lap of the day on our first lap at 10:44. It turned out this wasn't quite sustainable, though, so we backed off at the end of the first lap, looking for something more like 3.5 w/kg. We settled into that pace quite nicely, turning out very consistent times of 11:00, 11:06, and 11:02 on our subsequent laps.

With only three riders on our team, we had to bring everyone to the finish line together, and we worked well at the end with a strong push over the last kilometer, finishing in a group within 0.1 sec of each other, with a final time of 44:25. We were all pretty spent at the end, so I think that counts as a good effort. The final results confirmed that, with a finishing place of 58th out of 175 teams in our division, putting us in the top third, and behind only two other three-person teams.

We'll be racing again next Thursday, and we're always looking for new team members, so come out and join us!