Best on Hess Team Time Trial

The race was on! The crowd was loud! We were flying fast! Then we hit the 180 turn at the end of the out and back course and headed back to the finish. Only 4.5 miles to go. BOOOOOM! Our merry band of five quickly exploded and shelled two of our riders out the back, and I was seeing stars just trying to hold the wheel of my teammate ahead of me.

It was our second Team Time Trial this year, and the first one was a blast for me. We did drop two riders pretty early on that first one, but the course was relatively flat and we pushed on keeping a pretty steady pace. This course was a little different. It didn’t seem like much when we looked at it, but we made a critical mistake of not preriding the course the day or weeks before. We went out hot at the gun and pushed the pace hard. We were having fun cruising downhill not a care in the world. Alarm bells should have been blaring when we hit nearly 45 mph going down on an out and back course.

The way back was somewhat more difficult than anticipated. The hill offered little to no recovery, and my heart rate was sky high. I hit a new high for beats per minute that day (189). My teammates David Altschuld and Mike De Sena allowed me to wheel suck for most of the way back since I could barely keep up with them. I was the third and final rider though in our group and had to hang on to the finish. When we crossed the line I nearly vomitted on myself and felt like passing out would be a good option at that point. Luckily I held it together and kept my lunch down. We ended up in fourth place in the SM4 group which I was pretty happy with.

Our SM5 group which consisted of Chris Parsons, Chris Hill, Dan Kaskubar, Guy Pasquino, and Troy Westergren managed to crush the SM5 Team Time Trial and placed first in their category (They were the only ones in their category that showed up). Hey showing up is half the battle at these races, and on this day it was 99% of it. They had a blast too while they did it.

It didn’t hurt that the race director had some pretty stellar podium ladies there for the podium photo shot. Oh and a bunch of beer! Nice work guys.

We would like to thank our sponsors that helped make this ride such a success. Without our sponsors this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Thank you Evapco, American Roofing Supply Inc., and Veggie Go’s for the funding for our registration fees. And we would like to add a shoutout to Pit Viper for providing the team with some super sweet shades. Check out the official results for the team below.