A mate of mine had a ride out with team Ineos yesterday.
He was chuffed to bits he rode with them for 25km
View attachment 536424
Downhill in Tenerife
He was even tagged by Chris Froome
Chris seeing him as a new challenger
I won't know until late Wednesday, maybe only an hour before the race, I'm afraid. If this buggers up timings, then count me out ..... or you can give me the same time as someone else and I can leave with them (no drafting so should be no advantage, and they will be faster than me so I won't see them for long
well done Del. Always a great feeling making it round the team TT still very much part of the team contributing, I always feel for the guys that get dropped in the first couple of km...it happened me a couple of times when I tried out for the BRT espresso team last winter. The buzz when you get round with your team is great.Fast and Furious TTT tonight on the Greater London Flat route.
I thought I was about to make my (involuntary) Espresso debut. Due to some late team changes we lined up with 3 A riders, 4 Bs and a young lad in C who to all intents is a good B. But that left us just inside Frappe according to the rules, so any promotion is delayed!
As we reached our start time, we lost a B rider on the start line, for some reason he couldn't move off the line, and then one of our A riders lost touch due to Internet problems.
So, that left 6 of us riding flat out with the 2 As doing some huge turns on the front and the rest of us hanging on and sticking our noses in front for short spells. I was literally counting down the kilometres to go. Well first of all my target was to get to the end of Lap 1 with the group at about 15km out of 29, and then it was micro targets like am I still in the group at 10km to go, then 5km, then can I keep with them though the Green Park Underpass. The answer to all of them was yes!
Then the target became can I make it to the last km, because if I get dropped on the sprint that's no disgrace. And I was still there when the sprint opened up and then............. we crossed the line together. All 6 of us that were left in a single group!!
All I can say to my secret coach with his secret plan (he knows who he is) is that its working! I worked like stink tonight and collapsed in a heap on my bars at the end, but it was fantastic!
60th out of 155 in Frappe class with a finishing time of 41.21. I knew I'd worked hard when I checked the time of ZSunR Neptunes with @<Tommy> and @bridgy riding for them. They finished 37th with a time of 40.41, just 40 seconds ahead of us!
I do like the new ZSunR team names, named after planets. There's ZSunR Saturn as well as Neptune and others. But why can't you go full schoolboy humour and have ZSunR Uranus?
I won't be around next Wednesday but I might try and set a time on a TT bike on Monday night for you all to aim for
(shame you can't add ghosts like you could in Bkool so I could take part on Wednesday in a ghostly way!)One of the good things for me is that all of our team, bar 2 riders, are over 50s, and one of the As pulling on the front last night is an over 60. He's an absolute machine, so there's hope for me yet.
Well thanks for the compliment Tommy, but you didn't do too bad yourself 💪 (Glossing over your false startThat’s immense Del! Well done mate. @bridgy was very strong last night. Really pulling loads on the front. I’m quite glad we were doing a team event or if I’d been left trailing behind! Well apart from at the start... I was too busy typing on my phone to realise I’d carried on peddling across the start line and ended up a few hundred meters up the road before I realised I’d false started. Other than that all good.
)Yes please!
I won't be around next Wednesday but I might try and set a time on a TT bike on Monday night for you all to aim for
I was looking forward to this... but it's up Leith so I'll pass on this one. Good luck to everyone taking part. You do a great job organising the events @IrishAl and I'll hopefully be on he next one
I'll take @Joffey's place in the struggling up the hills and finishing last league then!
Hey, if you change your mind, I think we could probably have an epic race for last place between us! I get your feelings about the course - for me, I actually don't mind Leith Hill itself, it's the additional few miles of climbing just to get to the bottom of Leith that kills me (especially as the scenery in that part of the map is so... featureless)
