Haute Route: Day -1 9KM Prologue Time Trial

Day -1 means registration, briefing and final event preparation. A month ago, the organizers also decided to throw in a 9KM individual time trial. Relatively meaningless from an overall event perspective as the effort required is brief and any time differential formed during the prologue will be inconsequential over 7 days of riding.

It appears as though the primary purpose of the prologue is to seed the Day 1 start.

Day started with a quick roll over the race village to register, pick up race packets and race paraphernalia.

Truth be told, for Jamie, the day started with a 9:15am phone call inquiring as to his whereabouts. Jamie had missed the planned breakfast. Turns out the 9:15am phone call  was his wakeup call. 15min to wake, eat, dress and ride with us over to the race village turned a normally upbeat and positive Ribs into one crankasaurus for most of the morning.

The prologue TT sent riders off in 20sec intervals. The four of us started consecutively. Team TNA in the starting coral. As per TransAlps 2012, definitely the tightest looking squad. Note the coordinated pink socks. 

Ribs took this photo and the moment ended up being his "rose" for the day (more on roses and thorns in a future post). The Canadian Express lined up 1, 2, 3, 4 at the TT start ramp. Having never ridden a TT event before, I was a total clown on the ramp. Starter gave me the 10second countdown and I was nowhere near ready. Futzing with glasses. Getting gearing right. Playing with Garmin head unit. Mount bike and take 1/2 a pedal stroke when I realize that I'm headed off the side of the ramp. Quick course correction and I managed to avoid being the event's first crash victim. We all rode ourselves into the first start group for tomorrow with results posted here. 

Another kaffe + kuchen followed. 9km definitely earned a banana split.

Tomorrow it really starts. Unlike TransAlps, which is done in teams of two, Haute Route registers the time of each rider individually. For us, most of the fun of these events is sharing the experience. We have decided to ride in pairs, rotating partners daily. Day 1 pairings are Ribula/Wilbur and TLinden/Dooks. TL and I plan to deliver Ribs and Wilbur to the base of the Colombiere. 130km and 3100 on the day. In context of what's to come, one of the smaller efforts, somewhat equatable to a North Shore triple crown ride.

Heads up and rubber down.