Tonight's team time trial took us to Yorkshire. Carson, Melissa, Dusty, Shawn and I lined up at 6:20 PM for two laps of the 2019 Worlds Harrogate Circuit, a very demanding course that features constant ups and downs and hardly a bit of flat ground.
I spent a few minutes before the start trying to work on our organizational strategies, after realizing that I had been giving some conflicting advice previously regarding positioning within the group. It's tricky to hold a proper paceline formation in Zwift, and particularly to maintain the selected pull rotation order, so that the next rider is consistently in the #2 slot when the front rider pulls off. Tonight we decided to emphasize proper sequencing a bit more than we have been doing, while still prioritizing holding a line formation as the number one goal. I think we were quite successful in this, particularly early in the ride before fatigue started setting in. We spent a lot of time lined up perfectly in the correct rotation order, setting up some nice pull handoffs.
As usual, we started out at 3.6 W/kg. The group was chattier than usual, and by the end of the first lap Melissa was breaking out in song again, trotting out some Mon Rovia tunes. To me this is always a sign that we're not going hard enough, so I treated the group to my rendition of "Let's Go to Three Point Eight" by the Chainstompers. This was not well-received by the crowd. Carson retaliated a couple of minutes later with a few bars of "Let's Go to Three Point Nine", by the classic Icelandic folk-metal duo High-Powered Heart/High-Hearted Power. This was enough to put a stop to the serenades from Shutesbury.
Nearing the end of the second lap, motivation was starting to flag a bit, so I broke out the big guns in the form of "Let's Go to Four Point Oh" by the Powerheads (from their seminal 1978 album Pukebucket). Carson was very on-board with this, and soon opened up a bit of a gap. Fortunately Dusty and Melissa were able to close it down, and we crossed the line in a tight group, with just 0.7 seconds between our first- and fourth-place riders. We finished in 72nd place out of 105 teams in our division, which is by far our best result since we upgraded earlier in the winter, and a negative split of 20+ seconds on our two laps. Great work everyone!
We are going to do one more week of these TTT events next Thursday night, before our thoughts turn to hopes of spring and melting snow and outdoor rides. Come and join us!
