On September 24th I took part in the 44. BMW Vierermannschaftszeitfahren â a 4 people TTT from BMW on their test track north of Munich.
The race is 9 laps on the 7,77km long course which equals 70km in total, almost no elevation and corners with such a wide radius that you never even have to think about braking. I rode with 3 team members of my cycling club which I would classify as one being slightly faster than myself, one slightly slower than myself and one for motivation (if you happen to read this Harry, I still love you
).
Before the race we consulted with friends of the team, Aero- and TTT-experts from Aerofitting (they were part of forming a winning team for the German TTT national championship). Our main takeaways from that were that we should train together as often as possible (which we failed with never training in the full team), ride short leads of about 20-30s, when one rider is exhausted try to keep them in the train and rather have them skip their lead as this provides an aerodynamic advantage for everyone, adjust lead times instead of lead speed and some more details on how to efficiently switch the leading rider.
Race day 2h to 1h before the race:
We all meet up 2h before our start time as the race organizers had a mandatory safety meeting at this time, which we only partially could follow as we were stuck in the long queue for getting our timing chips and having our bikes checkedâŚnot for UCI compliance but for it being able to break and not have a loose headset bearing. Havent had that checked on my bike before a race yet, but all our bikes passed without an issue. Harry and myself knew the course and the safety concept from a previous 40km TT we rode on that very course a few months earlier, so we could quickly sum up where the racing line is, what to do in case of an emergency and how to overtake others. As we still had plenty time we went back to the carpark, attached the timing chips on our bikes and attached the race numbers to our suits before, still having plenty of time, sitting down to have some pre-race coffee and having a lovely chat with the multiple time winning team that parked right next to us. When we offered them coffee they were first suspicious, but in the end as we drank first also agreed on a cup whilst the trash-talk (âOh, you plan on going so slow that you wear the sub 50kph Rule28 base layer?â or something like this, its been a monthâŚ), gear and aerodynamics nerd-chat kept on.
Race day 1h before the race:
Its time to start our warm up and check for the initial order in which we want to ride. For the warm up we could use a giant, paved circle inside one of the race tracks corners. We ended up with aiming for 49kph at the start, possibly increasing it later in the race and the initial order being myself, the faster rider, the slightly slower rider and Harry. This was a mistake as we later had to find out the hard way.
Race:
As the second to last team we started on the 7.77km long course and quickly found our rhythm. I started getting up to 30kph out of the saddle, but with moderate power, then sat down and got into the aerobars and slowly driving it up to about 50kph with 350-ish Watt. When I next checked my Garmin I already was way past my lead time, so I shouted âWECHSELâ (we agreed on this very specific word which means âSwitchâ in German as it was easy to understand and distinguish from any exhaustion sound people tend to do 
), gave one pedal spin of higher power to create a small gap and drift to the right so my team members could pass by. As I saw the second rider passing me I prepared for slotting in again behind the third and it went like a charm. One could think we did practice this. And for the next laps it went on like this, smooth and efficient. On the second lap we figured out that we had slight headwind on the start straight which we could avoid by going a little of the racing line, closer to the tree-line next to the track. As we overtook many teams on the still very crowded track we were stuck in the âfast laneâ anyway.
The next moment I can remember is passing the 35km mark and still feeling strong and fresh when suddenly the very team that we shared our coffee with before the start and multiple timer winner passed usâŚWith 2-minute start intervals I was slightly shocked that they gained so much time on us already. But we started with the plan of a negative split, so maybe we could limit the loss in the second half of the race. I think my mates were as shocked as I was and did not want to give up already which one could feel by an increase in speed right when the other team was out of the 10m anti-draft range of the organizer. After a few hundred meters the âchaseâ stopped and we calmed down, settling for a slightly increased speed, but letting the other team go.
With 2 laps to go Harry suddenly got cramps and just dropped out, leaving it to the remaining three of us. As I was, up to this point, riding behind Harry I suddenly didnât have the slipstream of a musculus 1.9m guy in front of me anymore. In hindsight we should have placed the slightly slower rider behind him and not me. We somehow got the order mixed prior to this point, too. I was drafted by the slightly slower rider who, after the race, complained that I give terrible slipstream and that he had to push 300W already behind me at our cruise speed of about 50kph at this point.
This just got worse in the now reduced team and we could feel the accelerations and decelerations depending on who was leading. In hindsight this was a mistake and we should have altered the lead times significantly instead of the speed. The stronger rider and myself still felt good, even after 1h, so we drove up the speed slightly each time we were leading which totally broke the slightly slower rider, leading to massive gaps opening up in the last round.
After the race
We crossed the finish line after 1h 25min which equals an average speed of slightly below 50kph and meant a third place for us out of the 38 teams. A result we are very happy with for our first participation in this race. Also a result we want to improve on next year, for example by breaking the 50kph barrier. For comparison, the multiple time winning team, also winning this year and passing us at the middle of the race, clocked in a 1h 20min 43s = 52.03km/h.
All in all: TTTs are awesome, I wish there were more on the calendar. You dont have this strange sensation of speed, riding as close as possible to your teammate without being really able to break (except for the âair brakeâ which is sticking your head up) and trying to keep the fine balance of making them suffer by being as aero as you can and going fast, but not too much to keep them fresh enough for their turn on the front (and them doing the very same to you) in any other discipline I think.
BMW TTT | Ride | Strava
