Marius and his machine
The scene at the start
The warm up runs from the start to the Wintergreen Resort entrance and is just over 3 miles.
As you can see, the warm up starts with a nice gentle grade for 2 miles. Evilness starts here and the grade increases to over 10% for the last .5 mile. So, one should be sufficiently warmed up by the time the hard part starts!
My start time was 10:26 and Marius started a minute behind me. He passed me after about a mile (I've got almost 50 lbs on Marius) and I didn't see him again until the finish.
I arrived at the gate just trying to push the pedals. A guy was encouraging the riders on and he started cheering me on when I got distracted and fell over near a guard rail. I won't call it a crash cause I wasn't going very fast, sort of a slow motion list to the right. The guy was really nice and gave me a push when I got clipped in to get me started.
The hard part of the TT is just 3.4 miles of hell!
The average grade for this part of the route is 8.9% with a max grade of 17.9%. Ouch! I was already riding with a compact crankset but I was hurting through this part of the route and the 13-26 cassette just wasn't enough for my fat ass. If I do this ride again, I'll move to a 13-29 cassette and a mid-cage rear derailleur.
Wintergreen is an awesome event and I love the scenery. Someday I hope to hand over the Lanterne Rouge to someone who has suffered more on this ride.