My goals going into this race were
1. have smooth lines
2. stay in the aero bars as much as possible
3. leave is all on the road
and also ride like I don't have a stoker behind me.
Our warm up went terrible. We weren't in sync and I wasn't getting anything from the back. The progressive portion was decidedly not progressive so I switched and did a few short max power sprints instead so I could at least be sure everyones muscles were firing.
I've never been so nervous in a start gate.
I had one very bad line in the first left at the bottom of the hill. I didn’t break early enough and almost took us into the curb. I got some reassurance from the back with a "you got this Erin" and we got back to speed fast. The rest of the lines were good all race. Pedaled through most corners, stayed in the aero bars most of the race and even remembered to get my head tucked for most of the straight always.
I left it all out there and tried to be encouraging when carla was slowing down. In the end we lost too much time on the last lap as we weren't able to pick our pace up and the other teams were.
We placed 5th 20 sec behind the elite canadian team (they only has 2sec on us at the end of the 2nd lap).
Lap ave speeds: 36.9, 36.1, 36.0km/h
I hit my all time max 20min HR at 181