Here is a copy of my ride report from last night.
In their inaugural event, the all new recumbent team High Speed turned in an outstanding performance torching many of the teams in the competitive Mocha division.
Early in the week, it looked like the team would field at least 6 riders and maybe more. By the time the team wheeled up to the starting line, they were reduced to only four riders. This would mean that everyone would have very little time to rest in the draft and the team’s time would be counted as the third rider.
Captain In Training, Josh, set up a very basic plan; let the stronger C riders (Jim and Ray) do more of the pulling while the D riders (Josh and Robert H) stay in the draft as much as possible. The goal was to stay together at least through the aqueduct climb and rollers. The team also had help from team manager in the car, Robert L. Unfortunately, Robert L wanted to see how a cheese grater feels this week as he took a spill on the streets.
One minute before start time, team Low Drag took off out of the pens as the first team on the course. One minute later, team High Speed followed suite; now we had a rabbit to chase! The four riders quickly converged on the course and off we went! Jim did a lot of the pulls early in the race, followed by Ray staying up in the lead as well. Slowly but surely, team Low Drag was reeled in. The pass occurred shortly after passing the ocean side areas and heading back inland.
Crap, now team High Speed is the rabbit that everyone else is trying to chase! We saw a team slowly gaining in our rear view. On the slopes of the aqueduct, we were overtaken. It was not a clean pass as they split up and amongst our riders. On top of the aqueduct, we slowed just enough to let through all get through, but then the hunt was back on!
Through the rollers in the balloon fields, all four riders kept trading positions and taking pulls. In no time, we were heading up the second climb that is about half way through the river section. We knew this was going to be a difficult section to keep the team together. We set a pace with the C riders but that proved to be too low as our D riders quickly surged up the hill.
As we crested that hill, we were greeted by the glorious downhill section. Robert H took the lead for awhile through here. We made it to the last small climb leaving the river section with 1km to go. We used the same pacing strategy as before and again, the D riders surged through.
With 1km to go and all four riders still together, we knew we had a good finish coming. As we rounded the short turn for the final sprint with 500m to go, we started our sprint. I have no idea what our pace went up to, all I saw was red from my power bar in Zwift. We all finished within 1 second of each other. That was a pretty damn near perfect ride for a team who is just starting to know how each of us rides.
After all the dust settled on the WTRL TTT, team High Speed finished in 18th position with a time of 42:06. Amazingly, this is right where our predictions placed us hours before we even started. Even a broken close is right twice a day
Sorry, the team captain failed to take any useful images to show off the amazing performance of this team. If anyone else captured the team racing by, please share and we will get the added.
Thank you Ray for providing the first and last picture. Josh provided the middle picture. You can see the effort both Ray and Josh put out in the last part of the race by seeing all of the orange / red color at the bottom of the images.
In their inaugural event, the all new recumbent team High Speed turned in an outstanding performance torching many of the teams in the competitive Mocha division.
Early in the week, it looked like the team would field at least 6 riders and maybe more. By the time the team wheeled up to the starting line, they were reduced to only four riders. This would mean that everyone would have very little time to rest in the draft and the team’s time would be counted as the third rider.
Captain In Training, Josh, set up a very basic plan; let the stronger C riders (Jim and Ray) do more of the pulling while the D riders (Josh and Robert H) stay in the draft as much as possible. The goal was to stay together at least through the aqueduct climb and rollers. The team also had help from team manager in the car, Robert L. Unfortunately, Robert L wanted to see how a cheese grater feels this week as he took a spill on the streets.
One minute before start time, team Low Drag took off out of the pens as the first team on the course. One minute later, team High Speed followed suite; now we had a rabbit to chase! The four riders quickly converged on the course and off we went! Jim did a lot of the pulls early in the race, followed by Ray staying up in the lead as well. Slowly but surely, team Low Drag was reeled in. The pass occurred shortly after passing the ocean side areas and heading back inland.
Crap, now team High Speed is the rabbit that everyone else is trying to chase! We saw a team slowly gaining in our rear view. On the slopes of the aqueduct, we were overtaken. It was not a clean pass as they split up and amongst our riders. On top of the aqueduct, we slowed just enough to let through all get through, but then the hunt was back on!
Through the rollers in the balloon fields, all four riders kept trading positions and taking pulls. In no time, we were heading up the second climb that is about half way through the river section. We knew this was going to be a difficult section to keep the team together. We set a pace with the C riders but that proved to be too low as our D riders quickly surged up the hill.
As we crested that hill, we were greeted by the glorious downhill section. Robert H took the lead for awhile through here. We made it to the last small climb leaving the river section with 1km to go. We used the same pacing strategy as before and again, the D riders surged through.
With 1km to go and all four riders still together, we knew we had a good finish coming. As we rounded the short turn for the final sprint with 500m to go, we started our sprint. I have no idea what our pace went up to, all I saw was red from my power bar in Zwift. We all finished within 1 second of each other. That was a pretty damn near perfect ride for a team who is just starting to know how each of us rides.
After all the dust settled on the WTRL TTT, team High Speed finished in 18th position with a time of 42:06. Amazingly, this is right where our predictions placed us hours before we even started. Even a broken close is right twice a day
Sorry, the team captain failed to take any useful images to show off the amazing performance of this team. If anyone else captured the team racing by, please share and we will get the added.
Thank you Ray for providing the first and last picture. Josh provided the middle picture. You can see the effort both Ray and Josh put out in the last part of the race by seeing all of the orange / red color at the bottom of the images.
