Team Trial Championship… what a fantastic event! One of the most painful, yet rewarding races you can do all year. Jess, Riz, Ian, and I piled into my car and enjoyed that wonderful 1.5hr drive to Corvallis. Along the way we got eyeballed by 2 state troopers (curious of our shaved legs, I'm sure) and had an interesting time at the rest stop. First off, there was a line in the men's room… what's up with that? Also, the place was crawly with blue-hairs… and one particularly made a point of lighting up his ciggy while on oxygen… call me crazy, but that doesn't seem wise.

So we rolled up to the staging area plenty early and set up base camp. We checked in and chatted with the 4's who'd set up even
earlier. We talked about strategy, lessons learned from last year, and my rocking fu-manchu `stache (hopefully we'll have pics from the event posted soon so I can forward on some actions shots of the `stache). After some decent BS'ing it was time to warm-up.

Hopped on the trainer and did the warm-up thing. The one draw back to drinking so much water before the event is having to pee every 25 minutes. As a result, I wasn't able to stay on the bike for a sustained high-intensity effort. I would get my HR up to 170bpm for a minute or so at a time, but never held it for long enough to really acclimate. Take note, cuz this would come back to hurt me!

After the trainer-session, Riz, Cow, Ian, and I briefly rode on the road as a warm-up. However, it was pretty close to start time so we rolled to the start line. We showed up with about 90 seconds to spare… talk about just-in-time. Clock ticked down and we were off.

Lap 1 was fast and congested! We passed lots of teams, some of which were jack-asses about getting out of our way. Cow was great about getting on the `bullhorn' (aka his grumpy yelling voice) to order them to pull over. It felt like 6 of the 8 turns we were side by side with another team… some of them better about holding their lines than others.

Lap 2 was tough. That's when my body was starting to figure out what pain I had in store for it. Not much to report until the middle of
lap 2 when I developed a side ache. By the time we finished the lap I was hurting pretty bad and my power was suffering. A gap opened up out of the last turn and I wasn't able to close. At this point I was panicked and told the guys to go on without me. Those malicious SOBs weren't having any of that though. After a few seconds of deciding what to do or waiting for me to close the gap (which I couldn't do), Riz came back and pulled me back to the group. This is when something amazing happened… I settled down and recovered. By the time we got to turn #1 of the 3rd lap I felt good. Woohoo!

Lap 3 was a numbing 15 minutes. I tried to put my mind and body on auto-pilot and for the most part it worked. The only thing that was dicey was when we came out of an S-curve and I thought Ian was pulling off to the right, but he went left. That disrupted the flow momentarily, but we recovered well.

Lap 4 was a grind. By this time Riz and Cow revealed they ate their Wheaties for breakfast, because they were taking long pulls…. thank you thank you! When we got to turn 3 a gap opened up between Ian and us. Again, Riz dropped back to get us back together. Shortly after, we re-formed and made it to the homestretch. That's when we turned it up and left it all on the course. After the last curve, I was in front and took us up to 33mph. I held for as long as I could and then like a rocket booster for the shuttle I detached totally empty knowing my job was done. I sat up and watched the boys take it to the line. Clock stopped at 1:01:32.

It took a while afterwards to get everything back to normal, but it was a fantastic feeling to finish all together. Pain sucks, but shared pain for a team objective kicks ass! Unfortunately, there were a lot of other fast teams this year. We placed 6th out of 15.

Here is a link to my race data… enjoy!

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/email/accept.mb?senderPk.pkValue=214089&unitSystemPkValue=2&episodePk.pkValue=5809401

I was good to see so many Team O guys at the event. The 4's did well, especially the 2nd place finish… nice job fellas.

Until next time…. ILOT!
JLV