Saturday was the Galactic Team Time Trial. There were two events: 4-person and 2-person.

I entered the 4-person with Beth Walker, Laura Shuster, and Troy Soares (The last two are triathletes with whom we swim at Mountain View Masters). Laura is a super-strong time trialist, and Troy has qualified for and done THE Ironman (enough said), so we had a good team (I assume you know how Beth and I ride). We worked really smoothly together considering that we had only one practice session; the key was a lot of yelling! The course had a gradual uphill for the first 4-5 miles, then a twisty decent before a short uphill. Then it was pretty much flat to rolling 'til the turn around, about 3 miles of that. Troy took some really long pulls. We all were able to recover well and get back on; and we communicated well amongst ourselves. About the only rough spot was the turn-around: it was by far the narrowest I've ever had to negotiate (with deep gravel on the edges of the road). It was sad (yeah, right) that we demoralized a men's team as we went by them about a mile before the twisty ascent (had to go back up on the way back!)! By the time we were climbing, they were way out of sight. As we went by them, I mentioned to the two guys leading that their two teammates were gapped (by about 25 feet!). After that last gut-wrenching climb (only gut-wrenching because we were racing!), we dialed up the speed to maximum for the gradual decent to the finish. We did about 49:30 for the 19 mile course. We took second in the mixed open division out of, er, two teams; but hey the other team had 3 men and one woman. I'm not sure what their time was, but the men's winner was about 44 minutes.