The drive out the the venue was not nearly as entertaining as the drive into Nebraska. The overwhelming thought was, "damn . . . it's really windy and we are supposed to time trial in this?" . . . it wouldn't have been so bad if the car/bikes weren't constantly getting buffeted as we went in and out of the draft of semis.
For whatever reason the race organizers decided to have Kevin as last year's winner be the first to go off in the TT. Even more odd was that they lumped all the riders by team for the start times. It could have resulted in some mad, mad cheating had we not been upstanding, honest cyclists. I signed in and got my warmup under way with a nice view of the white caps on the lake.
As expected we all survived the wind and as expected Kevin was sitting in 1st place after the TT. I was very pleased to be in 3rd, only 11 seconds back (and 1 second out of 2nd place) given my dubious performances at CCTT to date. HART represented very well with Wes in 2nd and Randy in 6th, not very far back. That put Kevin and I in a tough spot for the afternoon road race.
Brian and I did a few science experiments after lunch to test the wind strength and speed. Good to see the tan lines are back in full effect . . .
I asked Randy what the HART strategy would be for the afternoon and got the answer I expected.
The old teammates rode very well as a team and made Kevin and I work much more than we wanted to in a sustained 35 MPH wind. Wes kept the race animated and Randy and Dan got up the road with Tarkington in tow with enough of a gap to shake up the GC. Kevin and I dropped to 5th and 6th overall. At least we got to get out of the wind, finally . . .
1 comment:
Jewfro gettin' back on track, too, I see!!
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