Stage 1: Team Time Trial- 8.2 km
Just assume that it is extremely windy here unless otherwise noted. A combination of jet lag and nerves wrecked me. I slept 3.5 hours, my stomach has been upset, and I couldn’t think clearly before the start. What an amateur! We emptied ourselves on the course, struggling with disorganization late in the race when the prologue specialists like Taylor (current world champ in the 4 km), Jesse Sergent (Olympic silver medalist 4 km team pursuit), and Alex Dowsett (7th U23 World TT) revved up the pace. We lost two guys around half way. Then instead of sitting on, I put the team in a dangerous situation with 2 km to go by burning my last candle to pull past Jesse, exploding, and leaving our team of originally 8 riders with just five riders to bring it home (timer stops when 5th rider crosses the line). My steady tempo style didn’t go over too well once I got packed in a Jesse, Taylor sandwich. Trek-LIVESTRONG kept 5 together and rode into last place out of the 16 teams. As disappointing as it feels, we were less than 15 seconds behind a cluster of Tour de France level teams and 39 seconds behind the winners. We will get plenty of opportunities for redemption. Moving on.