Short's Report: Tour of Belize: Stage 3 Team Time Trial

Tour of Belize: Stage 3 – Team Time Trial

Well, today is a day that we were looking forward to. We woke up at 3:45 to get to breakfast at 4. After breakfast Sheffield and Curtis were here to pick us up. We got to the start of the TTT and started to get our stuff ready. The race started in the parking lot of a prison. It was actually the Prison Gift shop. I’m not kidding. That’s what the sign said. We were told that the guys in prison make things and they sell it here.

Today John is our new GC guy. He is sitting 8th overall. While we still might go for a stage win our big concern is getting him on the podium on Sunday. We need to have a good race today so that nobody of importance gains time on him. We were a little out numbered since we only had 6 guys and most teams had 9. With Chris, Mike, and Joe riding TT bikes and John, Boyd, and I riding our road bikes with clip-on’s that put us at a bit of a disadvantage as well. We knew that last year the winning time was around 52:30. This was our goal.

Off we went. The course was really flat and really windy. I’m not sure that we ever had the wind at our back. There were two 180 degree turns. One was a round about so it was pretty smooth. The other was a stop sign.

Today we had no follow vehicle so we sent Randy out on the course on his bike with his camera. That way if one of us flatted we could at least ride the flat tire to him and take his wheel. He brought his camera with him because there have been accusations about team cars motor pacing their riders when nobody is looking. I guess that we are starting to win some people over here. I looked back at one point and we had a follow vehicle. After the race the guy driving it said that he didn’t want us to be out there without help. He also couldn’t believe how fast we were going. I couldn’t either. I almost got dropped about ¾ of the way through. I recovered near the end as we brought the speed up around 38-39 mph. Goal one accomplished, we all finished together. Goal two: our time: 50:20. We crushed the winning time from last year. The only team we had to worry about was Santinos (the team all the AEG-Aerospace guys are riding for). They all had full TT bikes with disc wheels. They come in with a time around 49:45.

We are all really pumped about our ride today. Our main concern was to beat the Sun Digital team. They had 9 guys in the TTT and two of them were in the break with John yesterday.

We should all move up nicely in the overall today. We wanted a podium finish and now we have two, and it’s only Monday.

I love this team!!!

Tomorrow: 50 miles 6 am start