Purdue University Team Time Trial

Unfortunately word came down last week that Wisconsin had to cancel their race weekend. As a fallout of this we lost a week of racing and Regionals got shifted to be a week earlier. Due to this Regionals would be held at Purdue/Notre Dame rather than Wisconsin. Also, it means that we lost a weekend of collegiate racing :( .

The weekend's racing would be split up between two different schools with Saturday's Road Race and Team Time Trial being held at Purdue and Sunday's Criterium being held at Notre Dame. (Obligatory Purdon't and Notre Damn reference inserted here.) We arrived at our Super 8 on Friday night and immediately went to bed to get ready for the early morning that was to come. Our TTT start time was 8:08 AM and the course was at least 20 min away, so we had to get up nice and early. TTT start times ended up getting delayed a half hour, which was nice since it allowed us to be warm while sitting in the car for a bit longer.

The TTT course consisted of a 10 mile "lollipop" course with one sizeable hill right at the beginning/end. The biggest factor of the race was definitely the wind. There was a very strong wind at our backs on the way out towards the turn around point. Unfortunately every rose (tailwind) has its thorn (headwind) and the way back towards the finish line was really tough.

A profile of the course

Our start time eventually came and the official gave us the signal to get started. We started off right into the tailwind and wasted no time getting up to speed. At some point during the first downhill I looked down at my computer and saw that we were doing right about 40 mph. Unfortunately during this descent we lost Kevin and it was just Zack and I left to suffer through the remaining 8 miles. We kept the pace as high as we could since we knew we had to take advantage of the tailwind. And that we did. According to Strava we averaged a little over 28mph on the east bound portion of the course.

Unfortunately we eventually had to turn around and face the wind. Once we did the pace noticeably dropped and every pedal stroke became somewhat of a chore. However, just up the road we could see a team with blue numbers which meant that it was one of our Men's C competitors. Putting them in our cross hairs and trying to reel them in helped us forget about the wind a little bit.

Going into the wind, pain faces on. Photo by Andy Jessop

 As we got a little bit closer we realized that it was Notre Dame that we were closing in on. They started a whole minute ahead of us, so by catching them we knew that we were doing fairly well. As we reached the base of the climb we were right up next to them. Unfortunately my legs were feeling the pain and I wasn't able to climb fast enough for us to pass them and Zack had to slow down a bit to wait for me. 

After we crested the climb we got back up to speed for the finishing stretch of the race. We eventually crossed the line and the suffering was over. Our final time was 25 mins 24 seconds which worked out to an average speed of right around 23 mph. All that was left to do now was wait for the results. We knew we had beaten Notre Dame nice and properly, but we had no idea how the other teams had done.

After a little bit the wait was over and the results were posted. We won!

We didn't have much time to celebrate though as the road race was scheduled to start at 10:30.