Last Sunday was the TTT. Compared to the ITT, I was in poorer form and with flu. Well, if one measures how worth an event is by the level of PAIN experienced, then I certainly had my money's worth...

Lead up to the event: Off the bike for about a week after being destroyed at AHM training on SAT, then forced myself on the bike on Thurs / Fri where it rained. Subsequently was too flusih to cycle on Sat so took bus to school to study, where my nose kept on leaking like some runaway tap. Popped regular doses of panadol cold rememdy.

At the shop, Sunny had some crazy cross country race earlier in the week and decided to pull out on Sat from the TTT, leaving us with a 3 man train.... You see, of the 4 starters, the clock is stopped once the 3rd man crosses the line. This effectively means that the 4th person is allowed to fall out. So I now knew i would DEFINITELY be the 'limiting step in the reaction'. Ho ho. Anyway Daniel asked if I wanted to borrow em Zipp 404 tubular wheels.... No harm swapping my creaky $350 Soul S3.0s (30mm depth, 1.5kg) with a $2800 wheelset (58mm depth, 1.3kg) right?

Alas things had to happen on race day.... Daniel seemingly AWOLed, so the team was tentless, drinkless and I was without the aerowheelset. I found out days later that his van had broken down and handphone battery was flat. Best.

On with the race:

In an attempt to aid our effort, we last minute drafted Eddie into the Team. Alas, as a continuation of cock-ups, our start time was some how pushed forward slightly, and we ended up starting with a 3 man team anyway. 48km = 4 laps of Changi Coastal. The first lap was done at an intensity less than that of the ITT with all of us taking equal turns at the front. Half way through the first lap though, Eddie joined in! He basically chased us and did a u-turn half way. So we had a 4 man team for a while, till he decided to drop out after the 2nd round.

(Picture from http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/kingyounglee/BikeBoutiqueTTT2008)

The winds had literally changed as compared to the ITT, with the upstream / downstream directions swapped around. The speeds of 39kmh up and 36kmh were now replaced with 37.5kmh up and 41.5kmh down. After the 2nd round, I was cooked. I was somehow already at the limit of my aerobic threshold. Each time I hit the front, I saw the speed drop by about 1kmh. In the end, I did turns of like less than 5 secs. I think Arab could easily tell I had hit the wall, and also knew that dropping out was no longer an option. So he had to get Lamuel to pull for longer, which he did.

(Picture from http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/kingyounglee/BikeBoutiqueTTT2008)

The worse part about TTT i realised was the constant need to accelerate.... And that really put the pain into me. It was a suffer fest whenever I relished my turn, moved to the back, and had to accelerate to get back on again. Timing to start the acceleration was also crucial to avoid either getting gapped or crashing. Apparently that's what happened to the girl in the mixed team. She clipped her front wheel and crashed. Luckily only superficial wounds for her.

We were passed by 2 teams along the way, of which the former was truly a superior class of riders. Our average speed was like 38.9kmh, compared to their 44++ kmh.

I was so tired after that effort that I crawled home at like 17kmh, and was basically too drained to do any studying the whole day thereafter.

This is what happens when you have no training but lots of flu.