Riding out of a C-130 Hercules sounds cool. It should be easy enough, right? Well it is certain that the rear ramps on these cargo planes were not designed for bicycles. Every rider who entered the airplane while I was waiting in line said exactly the same thing, "is this thing safe for bicycle wheels?" 
The ramp started descending at a nice grade and then around the midpoint the angle became really sharp and caused most of the riders to have visions of taco'd wheels. The Officials were giving instructions to all of the riders to just take one pedal stroke off of the airplane and then coast until you are completely on the ground.
The first 7/10ths of a mile was a very technical and only about 6 feet wide. Add to that the tail/cross wind leading from the Air Force museum to the highway and it was a very sketchy start @ 30mph.As soon as I got to the highway I turned into the headwind. The course was all head/cross wind from there until the turnaround. It was all completely flat so shifting was at a minimum. It was kinda like a trainer ride with turns added.
After the turnaround it was super fast. I managed to hit 35.5mph at one point with the gusty tailwind. I was keeping a pretty good pace and starting to make my last ditch effort to the finish when all of a sudden the finish tent came into view(0.8 miles too early).
I must say I really enjoyed the 22mile TT format. The last 3 miles of a 40K TT are just too much, IMHO, so I think we should just stick with this;)
After the race we hit the museum while waiting for the results. As you can see here Team Ag3r was realy "flying" on this day.
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Pictures of the finishing medal will follow when it arrives.
5 comments:
Never heard of a race where you start from the back of an airplane. You could certainly impress people with that, even if you hadn't done as well as you did. Great job!
The Start was like like that C-130 "dropped a load"...and it was YOU :)
When I first told the story of your start to my wife, she thought you and your bike "jumped" out of the plane (with a parachute?) while it was flying, like some kind of Nitro Circus stunt. I think that is a gret idea for next year...how about YOU?!?!?!!
When I told my wife about you starting from the back of an airplane, she THOUGHT you (and you bike) parachuted out, like some kind of Nitro Circus stunt!
I really like that picture of you sitting in the plane :)
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