Terra Australis 2011 - Day Four

Is a Team Time Trial a rest day? You could be forgiven for thinking so. For one, official proceedings for the day didn't start until 9am versus the previous days 8am starts, and secondly the distance was a mere 20km...
The Day Four schedule for Terra Australis 2011 was for a Team Time Trial of 20km set among the single track of Bright with a 50/50 split of vehicle trail. The start order was in traditional reverse order of the event current GC with a 3 minute split between each team's start. Topgear Team Norden had a 9:45am start while Peter and I were due to begin at 10:00am. The air was a-buzz with tactics and nerves as one-by-one teams assembled to start their assault on the course ahead. Terra director Clayton Neil was manning the start gate and encouraging each team into a pre-race interview while the 3 minutes counted down. It was great to hear all the different tales of how the last few days had been and how they were feeling about the new format of a time trial. Not getting caught was most likely at the fore-front of each starter.



We spent 30 or 40 minutes riding around the Bright area in warm-up mode. Once on the line the nerves were more dominant than any thoughts of tactical concepts, with our loose plan to use the single track stuff to the best of our advantage. I don't know if I let too much out of the bag or just enough just in time when Clayton asked my thoughts on how I was feeling and about a blast through some single track. I felt good, it was a later start to the day, I didn't have a hydration pack to lug around and the air temperature was perfect. I was hoping Pete was feeling the same as I'd just put my cards on the table.
Pete suggested I lead off into the first sections of single track, three... two... one... we were off, I took front wheel and we headed across the early flat lands. Making good time we soon settled into a steady rhythm getting good flow through the trails along the river across the first lot of vehicle trail and then back into some single track climbing. Before too long we could hear the chain slapping of a team in front, though, in single track you're never sure if they're 100 metres ahead or several kilometers depending on how the single track loops back against itself. Using gravity as best we could to recover between climbs we closed the gap on the team Fizztone Bombers within 8 kilometers and shared a long access road climb with them to the highest and near enough mid point of the TT course. In the next km or so we caught the second rider of the next team before breaking off into the next section of single track to hunt down rider one of that team.
The trails were fast, the moist red soil of the area was tacky, areas were lined with pine needles and what kind of hill traversing single track would be complete without the odd tree root?!
A section of vehicle track in the course was being used in both directions and it was as we were halfway along the return leg of this that we saw the last team to start the time trial pass us in the opposite direction. Fueled by the downhill run to the last single track we stepped it up another notch, wheel-to-wheel, railing berms, ducking trees, and punching over pinches to be back on the far side of the oval heading anti-clockwise, foreheads to the stem, to the start/finish line, stopping the clock at 1hr 11min 52sec. We enjoyed the hot seat of the quickest across the line while a few more teams finished.
In the wash-up we were rapt to take a category stage win and finish inside the top 10 overall for the team time trial. We'd probably gone out harder than we planned but the result was well worth it. If it was a lay-day I'd put the time trial down as a one hour spin session to keep the heart rate in check and the legs a shake in prep for the Mt Buffalo stage on Day Five.