Sopping Wet Twilight Report

I had planned writing about the terrors of the Athens Twilight completely separate from all else, but as you will soon see, the last few days have been less than awesome.

As I am coming to expect the race on Saturday night got pushed back over an hour past scheduled start time and me and the guys were left huddling under out tent trying to stay warm and dry until we got called to the start line just for 10pm.

We were lucky that the rain took a break just long enough for the announcer to make all the call ups, at least we weren’t freezing on the start line. It wasn’t long after the race began that the heavens opened up and it began to rain from every direction.

The race started with over a 150 riders, but after 30 minutes the race was down to just over 50 guys. The heavy rains along with fast paced racing tested more than just the racers fitness as we whipped around the 4 corner course 80 times in just over 90 minutes.

The team rode flawlessly all night, with the exception of one single mistake. The race winning attack happened right in front of Adam and myself, but for a multitude of reasons we just watched it go and let our teammate Will cover the move. Sadly, Will never made contact with the break away and our team was left to chase the break, or accept defeat.

TMK is lined out on the front in hot pursuit of the breakaway

With 40 laps to go all 8 of our guys (yes we were for sure the only team who had not lost any riders yet) lined up on the front of the bike race and started drilling it, in an attempt to reverse the quickly growing gap to the break of 6 guys.

We pulled and pulled but hardly made back more than 20 seconds on the break. We were tearing the race apart, as we would find out after the race when only just over 30 racers finished, but we couldn’t neutralize the break that had slipped away. We were racing for 7^th place.

We had decided to race for Adam that day because he is by far the most skilled bike handler in the rain, so as all of us worked at the front, Adam tried to conserve as much energy as he could for the sprint for 7^th. Our team lead the race until 1 lap to go when our team was overtaken by the United Healthcare team. Adam was able to jump of the back of their lead out and was in great position going into the last turn, but unfortunately his sprint was ruined as we had to dodge a rider who crashed right in front of him 200m from the line.

My sprint was much less exciting. After having pulled to chase the break back for 45 minutes, and after suffering from a flat tire (damn officials were putting people back in the race from the back of the field) I had no energy to contest the sprint. All I could do was finish. I rolled across the line in 18^th place I think.

Crappy conclusion to what was a valiant effort from our team, but luckily there are 5 more races were me may correct our mistakes.