Anyways when I had to bail on the Natchez trip one of my team members (Jonathan Falgout) had asked me to team up with him on a 2-man time trial in LaPlace, LA. He's a CAT 4 so it wouldn't help me out point wise but we were about equal in terms of bike strength so we thought we would make a pretty strong team. I borrowed a bike and helmet from his brother Adam Falgout and Jed Darby's wheels and did a time trial test with the team on the Tuesday before the race. This was my first time ever on a TT bike so it took a while to get used to the position and handling characteristics. My teammates switched though as the rules were a little hazy with me and Jonathan being able to race together since we were in different categories, so I got teamed up with Smitty Smith. Smitty Smith is about 5'3" and 120 lbs so drafting was going to be a questionable. He ended up being a great partner as he was much more experienced then I was so I learned quite a bit from him about time trialing.
The day before the race I rode with the Pack & Paddle group and decided to do another 40 miles after with Brian and Jeb for a total of 80 miles which wasn't the best idea when I was racing the next day. I had bigger races in mind though as I recently switched over from the 60 mile Ouachita Challenge to the 80 mile version so I needed some more miles in my legs.
The next morning I woke up a 4:15 ate a bowl of grapenuts and some english muffins with almond butter and met over at Precision bikes to carpool over to the race. My legs were a little stiff from the previous day's ride but no enough to slow me down. During the warmup I felt good with a slight tailwind on the way out I was easily able to hold 26 mph. After the warmup when we were all sitting around we noticed the wind was shifting back & forth. My goal for the 40K TT was to get under an hour. I had Smitty pull first as I was worried about going out to hard especially after reading about negative splits. After my first pull I knew I was going to be in trouble and the turn around couldnt come any sooner. When I was drafting off of Smitty I was still basically at my threshold so I knew this was going to hurt. Looking down at my GPS I knew that hitting my goal of under an hour was not going to happen.
We ended up finishing in an 1:03:37 (23.3 mph avg) in 5th place out of 10 teams. Not too bad especially since a couple of our teammates won our division. Brian an Jeb also won the CAT1/2 race with a time of 53:38, now thats fast. I had a good time and hope to improve my time trial abilities for this race season.
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