8/19 sub5 course ride

WOW - great ride... great weather, great legs, great teamwork. It's coming together. We rode great today and completed a sub4 80. Craigs Garmin had us at 3:52:22 for 80.

3 shortened laps was the plan, and we hit our marks and exceeded our pacing. Finished with all 10 riders. Mark, Mike, Craig, Paul, Sean, Scott, Tony, Dave, Rick and John.

Only one minor incident that I heard about. Mike hit a stick in a turn that kicked his rear wheel out at the apex. Quick reflexes kept him rolling. One bit of stupidity... on the first lap somewhere on Melms, I reached down for my water... no bottles! Still ice cold in the cooler. Thanks Scott for giving me one of yours!

We parked vehicles on Ketchum and quickened up our pit stops. 8:30 total, down from 13 minutes last week. Consensus for pit stops is to have coolers with pre-filled bottles at the ready. That should be faster than refilling bottles.

I learned that the 'take the lane' call from the back is useful when approaching a turn on the front. We did get a  bit quiet on the second lap. Let's make an effort to communicate, and when we're single file, repeat the signals/commands up and down the line. 10+ riders the line is too long to hear front to back and back to front.

On the sub5 day we can ease the pace up the hills. We were about 1 mph faster up the climbs than we needed (see summary data below). On the final Big Timber climb, Mike had the lead and we had a struggling rider, so we were calling up to him to control the pace for the struggling rider. To finish as a team, it's good for everyone to learn to ride someone elses pace. 

Rick will be next weeks domestique water boy for jumping the group on the last climb.
Mark is this weeks Captains favorite for pacing me up the last bit of Big Timber after Mike jumped onto Ricks wheel.
Mike gets the big wheels award for pulling up Big Timber and still having the legs to catch Ricks wheel.
Paul gets the Lantern Rouge - I was the struggling rider up Big Timber on lap 3

Great ride today. I was having an off day, and the team covered me. I had a blast.

Here's the lap stats. My odometer showed 81.6 miles total.

Lap Dist	Lap	Lap Ave	Total	Ave
27.2	1:16:12	21.42	1:16:12	21.42
stop 1	4:12		1:20:24	20.30
27.2	1:16:36	21.31	2:37:00	20.79
stop 2	4:20		2:41:20	20.23
27.2	1:17:30	21.06	3:58:50	20.50

Todays ride pace broken down by the first flat miles, and the last hillier miles. The Flats are the first 16 miles, Hills are the last 11 miles (i.e. starting at the turn unto Beck road). Planned sub5 pace is in parenthesis.
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Lap 1 Flats  21.8 (21.5)  Hills  21.3 (20.0)
Lap 2 Flats  21.5 (21.0)  Hills  21.3 (19.8)
Lap 3 Flats  21.2 (20.7)  Hills  20.9 (19.0)

Craigs Garmin data:  http://connect.garmin.com/player/212564101

Next team/course ride Saturday 8/25 7:30, Hampshire HS