For tonight's race, we fielded our largest team of the season thus far, as Dusty rejoined our crew after missing several weeks with an injury, and Austin joined for the first time. They joined our regular crew of Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and me, as we took on two laps of the Ocean Lava Cliffside Loop course in Watopia. This course features a significant climb and descent each lap, and at 24 miles total, is the longest TTT we've done so far, clocking in at almost an hour.

Having six riders felt like a luxury compared to our usual team of four. We started out with 60-second pulls at 3.6 W/kg, and having five minutes to recover in each rotation is great. In retrospect, we probably could have gone a little harder with such a big group, as there was quite a bit of chatter during the first lap, with Melissa even serenading us at one point.

After the first lap, I bumped the pace up to 3.8 W/kg, and the chatter died down a bit after that. Carson unfortunately had to leave us at around the 40-minute mark, so I assigned him a longer "death pull" right before he had to step out, which he handled admirably, pulling at over 4 W/kg for his final three minutes, taking us almost into the base of the climb of the second lap. Shawn fell back on the climb, and Austin, Dusty, Melissa and I forged ahead to the finish, arriving in a tight group at 58:35, and posting a negative split on the second lap of almost 30 seconds. Our effort was good for 89th place in the Frappe division out of 107 teams, most of which are stacked with strong A and B riders.

Next week we'll race on the hilly World's circuit in Yorkshire -- come out and join us!