The third week of our winter Zwift Team Time Trial series had us taking on two laps of the Flatland Loop in the Makuri Islands. Despite the name, this loop is not exactly flat, featuring a long draggy climb each lap followed by a steepish, high-speed descent.

The NCC brought four riders to the start line -- Carson, Melissa, Shawn, and me. We were very evenly-matched -- the pre-ride w/kg chart showed all of us within a couple of percentage points of each other. But it's really hard to build a race plan that factors in the raw watts from the big guys like me on the flats, along with the climbing ability of the skinny folks like Melissa and Carson. And to keep track of all of this on the fly. We could really use some more pre-ride analysis (talking to you Shawn) and definitely a DS (Dusty? Zinj? Any of our bunch of Henries?)

We all rode hard on course. It felt like everyone had a moment or two of "Am I the one who is holding the team back?"  Which is really the essence of what makes the the TTT experience so great. The teamwork element makes everyone push harder.

As of this writing, we are sitting at 33rd in our category out of a total of 182 teams, which is by far our best result of the year, so huge props to everyone who participated. We'll be doing this event throughout the winter, so please keep an eye on our calendar; the more riders we can get, the better!