Rabbit Mountain Team Time Trial - No Podium, but BAT Points

This was a great event and a ton of fun. 3 of my teamates and myself made up a team of 4 to compete in the Rabbit Mountain Team Time Trial on Sunday. This was an 11 km time trial the 180 meters of climbing, with the last 500 meters being a 13% climb to the finish line. The team consisted of Jeremy Gebben, Andrei Novac, Paul Bauersfeld, and myself. Our very first team practice occured on race day about an hour prior to the race. We did not have time trial rigs, aerodynamic helmets, or other fancy gear.....this was strictly a stock gear race. We worked on riding as a team in arodynamic formats and regrouping on climbs, etc. We determined that Jeremy and Paul were the best at blocking the wind since they are both over 6ft tall and wider bodied tan Andrei and I. The race started pretty mellow with all of us in line trying to get positioned. We slowly increased our speed and maintained speeds between 22-26 mph during the first 5k of false flat into a strong headwind. We made the turn and quickly regrouped on the short climb without losing much speed. Over the next 2km we caught a little crosswind that allowed us to maintain decent speed throughout the small incline. At this time we were all 4 making solid pulls for about 15-30 seconds each. As we hit the steeper grade with about 2km to go, things got much harder and Paul lost contact with our group. Paul had given us 110%, but now it was up to Andrei, Jeremy, and I to finish. I felt pretty confident in how we were doing since we could see (and were quicly catching) two teams that started 1 and 2 minutes ahead of us. We made the turn after the parking lot and Andrei gave us a strong surge of energy, and I jumped on his wheel as he pulled us to the next turn. We could finally see the finish line, but we were all hurting (I think I was hurting the most). I had not been up the final climb before, and I could see that it was steep so I started to settle in to prepare to spin up the hill. Little did I know that this was not an option....Jeremy came up behind me and gave me a little push on the back and said "lets go Ty". So we all three stood up and started hammering as hard as we could up the hill. We were in a side by side formation with each of us matching and attempting to increase each other's pace. We flew past the Echelon Team that had started two minutes ahead of us and caught the SEAR team that started 1 minute ahead of us. When we crossed the finish line I think we all felt confident that we had given it 100% (my HR was 198 bpm at the finish line), and thought our chances of finishing in the top half of the teams were good. We quickly caught our breath and headed back down the hill to meet and congratulate Paul and then head back to town. It turns out we finished 5th out of 11....we missed 4th place by 0.05 seconds...if only Andrei and I had shaved our legs and face I think we would have saved those precious 0.05 seconds with improved aerodynamics :) Here are the final results.

1 Rocky Mountain Spine 18:19.22
2 Echelon Spokes and Sl 19:11.79
3 D.R. Horton/SEAR, 19:22.09
4 Haul N Ass, 19:37.89
5 Swift Cycling, 19:37.94
6 Team Einstein's Cycli 19:40.13
7 Vitamin Cottage Cycli 20:06.63
8 twin peaks race team, 20:26.65
9 D.R. Horton/SEAR, 20:54.29
10 Christiancycling.com, 21:08.11
11 Echelon team2, 23:07.46

Just to give you an idea of how hard we went, here are my stats for the TTT:
Max HR: 198 bpm
Avg HR: 184 bpm
Avg Speed: 20.2 mph
Max Speed: 29.5 mph
Ascent: 495 ft
Temp: 69 degrees