Raising Cane's 3 Man TT

Raising Cane's Three Man Time Trial - Baton Rouge, LA

Yesterday we had the Raising Cane's 3 man time trial. I road with Dustin Flint and Bennie Flores. Got up about 6 to down some food.. I couldn't get myself to, but I eventually sat down in front of the tv with a big plate piled high with bread and made myself. It's 50 degrees upon waking and suppose to warm up. We get out there, register and start setting up our bikes to warm up. Phil Baker was nice enough to trust me with his Zipp 404's. I put the zipp on the front and use my powertap with a disc cover on the back. Those are a hell of a pair of wheels. So unbelievably fast. There was a pretty big turn out. About 130 people total racing. Of course it starts late and we get a start time of 10:41. I had already been warming up for about 20 minutes and we still had about 50 minutes till start. I got off and stretched to try to stay warm and then hopped back on after about 20-30 minutes. Come to find out the start time was wrong and we were starting in about 7 minutes. Not nearly enough time to warm up, we go do 1 hard effort out on the road and almost missed our start?! We roll up and were put up 3rd in line. Like Rolf Aldag says in hell on wheels, that minute up there at the start gate is the longest minute imaginable. "50 seconds" the man says... wait.... tug on the slightly too large skin suit a little. pull brakes, make sure they're straight and not rubbing the wheel, take a sip of gatorade, put gel under skinsuit.. "30seconds" jesus... so bloody long. reset my computer for the 40k painfest interval. "10 seconds" Next thing were off. I roll out first since I have the powertap under the disc cover. I make sure we don't go out too hard so end up putting aroudn 360watts for the first pull and into the turn about half a mile down the road. Immediately after the turn and about 2-3 minutes into the race we catch the first womans team that started in front of us. We eventually caught 6 teams that started in front of us. The first lap was pretty painful. The wind had picked up a good bit and the whole back stretch (90% of the course) was a headwind. I could really feel how unwarm I was. I didn't feel I was breathing hard, but my legs felt really tight. I felt like I could definately have put more power out, but my legs felt so bad. going into the 2nd lap was good for the motivation as we only had to do that 1 more time. On the turn after the start we got stuck behind another 2 teams going into it so had to slow down and pass after. Bennie was really hurting and told us he couldn't hang on anymore. We slowed up abit, let him get on the back and sit in as long as he needed. Turns out he only sat in 1 pull, and then the rest of the race was taking monster pulls, as was Dustin. We were absolutely deep, deep inside the pain cave and i've never been happier to see the curves up ahead signaling the finish. Me and Dustin floored it for the last kilometer and dropped Bennie behind, but the clocked stopped as the second man crossed the line. We go flying into the finish at almost 33mph and i pulled through next to him so we finished side by side to stop the clock sooner. Not that the milliseconds would matter but it's always a good precaution. I took some cool down and started to cramp on my inner thighs. I've never cramped there, and come to think of it, I never cramp at all. But I was definately hurtin. My position is prolly as close as I can get it on my cervelo, which is too small. So I will have to keep hurting till I can get my Orbea Ordu. We averaged around 26.5mph for a time of 48:42. I thought I saw 48:30 when I crossed the line but nothing to complain about. 26.5mph is good considering the huge headwind the whole way. I'm glad I can still feel like crap and come out with a win with Dustin and Bennie (they were riding like mopeds. fast?!)

I stretched out a little, ate some bananas and drank my recovery drink. About an hour later the results were up. Me Bennie and Dustin finished 1st in our category so we were pumped about that. I'm glad we could get a win after a disappointing Roubaix. My mom took me out to a victory sushi lunch/dinner. I've never eaten so much sushi in my life. 5 rolls, sapporo, and red bean ice cream. The waiter took our sushi list order and was like, "Oh okay so just sushi for you guys today?" I was like, uuuuh no that's just for me. Not as much sushi as Nick use to eat, but it was a good try. I'm off for a recovery ride and going to pick up liz as she just got back from Paris last night around 2am.