Day 3- Nipika Time Trial

Day 3 was a time trial. Each race team was assigned a start time, 30 seconds apart. They did a 47 km loop through the property of Nipika. Blaine and Ted started 10:18 am, which gave us an opportunity to sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast. The rumour was that the time trial was going to a beautiful trail with incredible scenery, and that 99% of it was rideable. Our guys were stoked, as this was exactly their style of biking, highly technical and spent on 2 wheels. They weren't disappointed. They said that they had so much fun on this portion of the race, that they would have ridden it again!

The morning started off with our first mechanical failure. Blaine realized that he had a cracked spindle 20 minutes before their time for the time trial. Blaine raced over to Adrian, their mechanic and had it repaired as fast as they could. We rushed up to the start line in time to see Blaine racing up just in time. Fortunatley, Adrian pulled out all the stops and had Blaine’s bike running perfectly for him.

All smiles and wheelies as they pass us at the 2/3 point.

It was a gorgeous day, sunny and hot. Most of us are a little sunburned from sitting by the trail! The trail took the racers in a huge figure eight loop which brought them past us during the transition and at the finish. Mark, Laura and I camped out by the finish line and cheered everyone on. We knew our guys were doing great when they passed us at the half way mark pulling wheelies. They finished their time trial in 4 hour and 42 minutes. Their time has bumped them up into 87th place.

We heard several stories today of this being many teams last day riding. Injuries, unrepairable bike mechanicals and frustrations were some of the stories that we heard. Our team is in great spirit, healthy, feeling great and taking one day at a time.