Bike: BMC Teamelite 01 XX1 Rocket Ron 2.1 Snakeskin / Rocket Ron 2.1 Snakeskin 1.50 / 1.50 bar. Bontrager XXX wheels.
The H12 team race is a given part of my season. The rules are that each rider of the team rides one or more laps of the course before switching over to the next rider. A lap took approximately 30 minutes to complete. We decided to ride one lap at a time, before switching over to the next rider.
This year the team was the same as last year: Anton Johanesson, Phille Nilsson and Jonas Nilsson. I love racing with these guys as they are such a happy and positive bunch.
I took the first lap which includes a start loop on gravel roads. Unfortunately I got a bad position on the starting grid with A LOT of riders ahead of me. So as the race started I began to move up through the crowd of riders. But then, after just a couple of kilometers, the rider in front of me suddenly braked and I ran into his rear wheel and had a minor crash. I was up on my bike again quickly but I had lost a bunch of places and had to work at catching up again.
After the start lap I switched over to Anton, who then switched over to Jonas and then Phille last. I then sat down and took it easy while waiting for my second stint in 1.5 hours. The weather was lovely and I just relaxed in the warm sun.
We were doing quite well and our position varied around 16th - 19th out of 160 teams. Not as good as last year when we finished in the top-10.
With these kind of super intensive half-hour stints it's interesting to look at how my performance varied during the race:
Lap: Avg H/R: Max H/R: Time:
1 171 184 30:25
2 178 186 30:14
3 174 184 30:29
4 170 179 30:43
5 161 172 31:45
6 156 171 31:52
Analyzing the data seems to show that I was able to keep up the pace for the first four laps, while getting tired in the last two.
The race was a lot of fun and I'll do it again next year... However, I was thinking... Perhaps solo next year? We'll see.
I have videos from a few of the laps that I'm going to upload to Youtube... Coming up!
Results
