Barbi-qued

So today was the annual Team Time Trial! It was a great day- a good fun race, which is what races should be, right?

We put together the strongest Pac Velo women's team we could and hoped to defend our title from last year... It was raining at the start which posed a challenge for sure, but I think we all were able to focus through that and we rode well together.

We stayed together as a group for the first half, but then Nalani got caught out in a gap and ended up riding home hard all alone. She did great though and helped us a ton with her strong pulls on the way out. Coming home we had a wicked headwind and it was hard riding... just 3 of us rotating pulls... but we knew we had some stiff Barbie competition and we weren't exactly interested in letting go of our title from last year! So we pushed the best we could and crossed the line in 1:03:54. This is me, Sandy, and Jenny right before we crossed the line.

I did not know where that would place us, but I had other immediate concerns on my mind... like, where's my next water bottle and get me some GU and is that my daughter wearing her pajamas with boots running around in that field???

I had about 15 minutes this year before I was to start my next race with the mixed team. Let me tell you- that is MUCH better than the 2 minutes I had last year! :) I had time to take my GU, drink some, spin my legs out a little and gather up my male escorts for race #2. Nice.

The second race was not nearly as hard this year as it was last year! Part of that is because I am more fit, but part of that is because all three of my male teammates had also already raced their own TTT so they were just as tired as I was. Phew! This year there was no yelling from me about how they needed to slow down... in fact, every time one of them was nice enough to ask, my response was, "I'm fine!" It's easy to sit on the back of a group of guys who are too tired to hammer that fast! ;) Unfortunately one of our guys didn't eat/drink between races so he bonked big time toward the end- I gave him my bottle that had some carbs in it but it was too late (lesson learned for him I'm sure!) and he dropped off the back. I actually felt super and took a couple strong pulls there in the last bit... we crossed the line though and I laughed because it was 1:04 something on my watch. Really? Our women's team beat our mixed team? Crack me up. I guess that makes sense though because we were all beat tired by the second round.

Anyway, Nalani and I took off on a 30 minute run while they were calculating the results. Unlike last year, I was actually able to run this time after racing 2 x 40K! No cramping at all! I was quite happy about that for sure. So all in all I was psyched about the day and how I felt... which took a little bit of the sting out of the fact that our women's team lost by 21 seconds. ARGH! Another one of our teammates asked a great question- "How could you have found another 21 seconds today?" Jenny and I looked at each other with kind of a blank look and said, "I don't know?" So we can't feel too baldy about it because we gave it what we had today and it just wasn't enough. We were Barbi-qued. That said, we like good races and are looking forward to a rematch next year. :)