Tonight was our first NCC entry in the WTRL Thursday night Team Time Trial racing series. This is one of the biggest, oldest racing events on Zwift, and it was great to finally get an NCC team into the mix.
I was joined by Carson, Michael, Shawn, and Lauren, racing on the "Greater London 8" route in London, which features a flat loop through Knightsbridge followed by the big climb up Box Hill and a fast descent to the finish. Our team got organized quickly at the start into a nice tight line formation, behind big initial pulls by Carson and Shawn.
Everyone did their share of work at the front of the group as we rolled through the initial flat section. Once we got to the Box Hill climb, Lauren fell back (perhaps feeling the effects of the 50-mile gravel ride with 6,000' of climbing that she did earlier in the day). With five riders on the team, the team time is taken as the fourth rider to cross the line, so Michael was in the hot seat for the climb once Lauren dropped back. He put in a huge effort, getting to the top in a little under nine minutes, with Carson, Shawn, and me trying to sit in front of him and give him a bit of draft.
Once we got over the top, Carson and Shawn took over to lead us down the hill, and we powered through to finish in just under 40 minutes, with the four of us finishing within one second of one another. It was hard work and a satisfying effort, with all members of the team contributing to the result.
Results are still rolling in from some of the last few west coast time slots, but as of this writing we are sitting in 68th place out of 185 teams in our division, which I think is pretty respectable for our first effort in this competition (especially since most of the fast teams are rolling with the maximum complement of eight riders).
We will be running this event on Thursday nights through the winter season. Signups open each Friday for the following week's event; we will post an event on the NCC calendar each week with the registration link to sign up. Teams are a minimum of three and a maximum of eight riders; if we get enough participants we will split up into multiple teams.
