Tripleshot Cycling

Moose FRIGGING ROCKED!!!! Holy crap that was one fast Alce! Just a brief report so others can also chime in.

At one end of the Tripleshot results spectrum Gavin killed the ITT and took 2nd. At the other end Roland had a flat at 30k and dnf'd. All the rest of us (10 Easter Eggs in total) fell somewhere in the middle.

We also saw Adam have a terrible start as he had to limit his gears to a junior gear so he missed his start time, was pushed to last then finished the ITT and set off right away in the TTT! He showed HUGE heart!

Ian looked rock solid out there as did Simon. Carly &Ryan smoked the course averaging around 42.5km/h!

The TTT also was awesome. We all busted our asses. I confessed to feeling a great deal of hatred for my fellow Alce Elegante at various times during the TTT but managed to hang in there. At the end of teh day we ended up second to a team from Glotman who beat our asses by 4 minutes!!!!! hmmmmmmm

What a glorious and humbling day of racing! Nothing like getting a thorough ass-kicking from riders on the mainland to keep one's ego in check.

I raced the ITT and the TTT with Alce Elegante yesterday. There was a nasty headwind on the two splits heading out, so on the ITT I purposely held back to conserve energy for the return splits. Josh was my minute man, which was bad for me because when he's a minute up the road it's impossible to close the gap!

My Garmin was at a 45 degree angle on the stem, which was cool because in the reflection I could catch glimpses of whatever was behind me. On the third quarter I saw the Moose closing in, which was a pretty terrifying sight! It was good motivation for the last quarter and I managed to ramp it up and keep away. Crossing the finish line I had the satisfying feeling of thinking my chest was going to explode and that I would never walk again.

After a short break, we returned to the killing field for more punishment in the TTT. I think the wind was picking up continually throughout the day, because it felt even more brutal heading out! At least that's what I want to believe, because I feel less bad that Steven Grandy's team beat us by four minutes (they were half done when we started). But after the first turnaround I remember yelling with joy at how easy it was to go 50 km/h on the flat.

Moose had an awesome day and earned some well-deserved upgrade points. In the paracycling category Karen crushed the competition, winning first place by a huge margin!

I also want to thank Dave Spiers for his incredible generosity in letting me borrow his P3C and helmet for several weeks leading up to this event.

My stats for the TTT are here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46859094

Today, my body hurts.

80km of full effort time trialing is really only fun in retrospect. While you are doing it, it just hurts.

My ITT went pretty well, I felt solid, not bad, not great. I managed to go out easy and keep the heartrate down in the mid 160's for the first 20k, and ramp it up for the second 20K. Havind shawn 1 minute behind me was fairly motivating, as I could see his progress on the turn arounds, and we ended up keeping our 1 minute gap to within 0.4 seconds. The 10km "outs" were fairly demoralizing fighting the headwinds going 36km/h, but the "backs" were tonnes of fun doing more like 45-46km/h.

The TTT felt solid. All our work on the turnarounds paid off, and we nailed our turns at the cones. Everyone rode solid, and we put eachother into quite a bit of pain. The wind had definitely picked up from the ITT. I remember coming off my first pull on the front on our first time back, turning to Gavin as he came by me and saying "oh, yeah, 50km/h!"
By the end, it was pretty hard to not fantasize about it ending. My whole body just hurt. Personally, I was feeling strong for the first 3/4 of the race until I took a couple longer turns at the front than I should have, and quickly went to being on the rivet and in real danger of being dropped. I ended up having to sit out of couple rotations on the last time back, then tried to get up to the front and lay it all out the best I could for a final pull so the other three guys could take it to the finish together.

The best part of the day for me, definitely, was after it was all done, and the next few hours of hunger and endorphin induced partial delerium that always makes the trip home fun. Gavin and I got into a bit of an eating frenzy at the ferry terminal, and easily made up for any calorie deficits (or fitness gains) we may have incurred during the race.

What ferry did you get? Did you miss the 5?

we were 4 cars away from making the 5. Ended up on the 6........which allowed us to go back for pizza and ice cream.

Josh.E wrote:we were 4 cars away from making the 5. Ended up on the 6........which allowed us to go back for pizza and ice cream.

We hit the buffet. There was no ice cream. Peter was not happy.

Tell us about the 'flair'.. details please! Congrats. Great showing and great results.

ITT: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46905781

TTT: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/46905780

Why doesn't Peter tell us about the flair? Oh wait, he can't, because he forgot his in his car! ...or is it ? His membership in Alce Elegante is suspended until he brings us photographic proof of him wearing the sunglasses in court.

I for one know the bright sunglasses made all the difference. I didn't have them for the ITT, and that race hurt a lot more. That's all the proof I need.

Also - has anyone heard from Moose? When he got off his bike he seemed to be having a great deal of difficulty with his "moosy bits" such that Karen was like "why doesnt he stop touching that thing, its creepy"

It was creepy I admit Peter - and it still hurts like someone took a grinder to my junk! I spent last night sitting in a bowl of chilled Vaseline with a beer in hand. Apparently I'm not used to riding 80k on a TT bike with a seat I'm not used to! But I guess at least it kept me distracted from the pain in my legs. That was definitely one of the hardest days I've ever had on a bike!

Great day though everyone! I personally was very happy with both efforts - though as Shawn mentioned, very humbling to say the least. Despite what I thought was my best possible effort for the day in the ITT (177 bpm average!) - I still got spanked very very badly by ALOT of people. Including Gillian from OBB - who absolutely killed the women's field - so hats off to her for kickin butt.

Having not done any ITT's of that distance before (other than in tri) - I just played the game of 'let's pin the heart rate and see how long we can hold it' Seemed to pay off as I was fairly consistent through the race. Very big hats off to Shawn for the huge effort in the final leg of the ITT. I was very close to him coming out of the final turn-around and he gave it everything to stay away successfully - but he made for an excellent rabbit to help keep on the gas through the final 10k.

My ITT stats: (make sure to select heart rate from one of the drop downs!)
http://connect.garmin.com/player/46790983

I was also very happy with the TTT - I think we were perfectly balanced as a group for that race, and did a great job of pushing each other to the limit without breaking anyone. And, as practiced - our turns were absolutely beautiful! Awesome job to the team - and I believe we went as fast as we possibly could and had a near perfect race (despite a brutalizing headwind!)

Really amazing job on everyone's part yesterday! It was so great to see such a big contingency of Tripleshotters at a Vancouver race - and I think people really noticed it. We definitely have the best team spirit of any team - it felt so awesome to be yelling and hearing encouragement from other team members as we passed each other going in opposite directions. I especially loved seeing Carly and Ryan scream by - it was like an Easter egg bullet train!

Really sucked missing the ferry and not being able to laugh and eat with the other teammates on the ferry. But I think we made up for it in the terminal cafeteria! I definitely consumed at least 3x the calories I burned yesterday!

Yay - now on to CROSS SEASON!!!!

Holy crap! I just took a look at your HR.. 200 max, average 177! Uhm, so much for the old adage... 'too many cyclists go too hard at the start of a TT'... screw that! Pin it to the max then hold it at your AT... Nice.

Congrats you guys!

Jeez, Gavin. I don't know what impressed me most: the insane HR or the "chilled vaseline"!

Great effort, everyone!

Holy freaking God. Why I do some of these things I have no idea. Wait, no, let me correct that: why I let Peter talk me into these things, I have no idea.

My initial plan was for the ITT to be a super relaxed, 75% effort warm up so I wouldnt get dropped in the TTT (this just in: I don't know myself at all!). This went quite well for the first 20km. Gavin, Peter and Roland rocketed past me within that first 20km. Gavin almost blew me off the road he was going so fast. I hit the second turnaround and saw that I was regaining some ground on Roland that I'd lost in the first lap. All plans to save myself completely forgotten, I hit the gas and went for it. I ended up passing him with 10km left (I found out later he flatted with about 12km left...). In the end, not a stellar time, but I was happy with the effort.

Then the TTT. Hoo boy... I can't actually comment much on this, as I made some silly mistakes and got shelled about 8km in. I was working my ass off just to make it to the turnaround, because I knew the headwind that was slowly killing me would turn into the tailwind that would save my ass. I got off the front, couldn't latch back on to the back and that was that. I rode the rest of the lap reasonably hard to try to assuage my guilt at letting the rest of the team down (although according to Ryan, my guilty face looks a lot like my "I'm going to kill you bastards for doing this to me" face). Upon returning the the start/finish for the first lap, I was informed by an official and Simon that it would be good for me to complete the second lap in case one of the others had a mechanical. Suffice it to say, I've now had my "finished the race after everyone packed up and went home" experience...

Observations:
- in the long run, TTs will be good for me, because they will give me confidence to ride off the front of road races by myself and know that I can sustain it
- in the short term, TTs just hurt like a bastard
- I needed to be smarter in the TTT. Instead of worrying that not taking pulls would piss of my teammates, I should have realized that that would allow me to stay on longer, thus decreasing the pain of my teammates later on.
- when training, I need to spend more time maneuvering that line between sustainable pace and unsustainable pace, so that I can be more disciplined in doing so during races

Thanks:
- Peter, for getting me into this mess
- Roland, Adam and Ryan for patience with my learning process at their expense
- Simon for much needed roadside support during the TTT
- everyone else for an awesome weekend

Results are up: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key ... l=en&gid=2