What a ride and what a feeling pushing it to the line with a last huge effort!
It was a hard ride in front of us until this final moments though, as we headed out for the ride 80 minutes before that. A pan flat and fast route awaited us. Today we had assembled a smaller, but highly motivated group. We were ready to tackle this special stage of the Knight Rides with might. (Except those who were missing their breakfast doughnut like Sir Rich @rrutis, who was giving his best anyway, like always.)
(A smaller group, but are we stacked with power! Sir Rich will be there shortly, too)
After a warming up of 8 minutes those of us running SYSTM beside would start Team Scream. For those who would be using only Zwift I was doing the calls for the power changes and trying to give some more impressions from the video to take of the mind a bit from the hard ride.
So for me it was quite taxing, not only riding without ERG, trying to get the efforts somewhat right, but also typing almost non stop power changes and stuff while watching the workout and Zwift at the same time. I might have miscalculated a few efforts as I quickly tried to convert all of them from my numbers in my head to relative FTP. Ah well, it is the thought that counts anyway, right? 
(Happy Knight-chatter, just before the end of the warming up!)
After the warm up that we used like usually to chat and for jokes the efforts then kicked in. Sadly we lost one of our power houses to a firefighter alert he had to attend to. But as it is with Team Timetrials: If you loose a rider, you just have to go harder. And so we did.
That it was the smoke from @Chris_Wright’s legs that triggered the alert was probably just a rumor, but we shall inquire and keep you updated about that.
(Deep into the effort, right after ouch-time, just before more ouch!)
With a master piece of a workout for a blueprint, there was not much that could go wrong. Our group of interns struggled for every second with the panorama of Stavanger in the background. Each push we did at the front was hard and glorious. It was content fast pace suffering, with not much time for anything else than to focus on the hard ride. We will have to get an extra dose of chatting next week to catch up on our quota though.
But of course there still was time for The Sip™, which was duly announced by Sir Ruben @Medina81 at 1:10 hours.
(A very hard finish, so much red and yellow!
#feelsgood #emptythetank)
We pushed hard all the way of the workout and then enjoyed the warm glow (spell: hot burn in the legs) of achievement. With splendid aerial views over Stavanger ended the workout and soon enough with bursts of confetti the Knight Ride ended as well.
(Not Stavanger in the background but a great Team rolling in after a hard day out!)
With this very hard special ride we take a break from special events, even if I might have hinted so otherwise 2 weeks ago. We will be having a normal, that means more chatty ride next week, which might or might not turn out harder than expected for those who like to do so.
Thank you for all that came out to the 2nd annual Knight Rides Team Scream. It was hard, it was fun and we were toast. Mission accomplished!
If you think you might have missed out on a hard ride in a stellar group. You did. But fret no more, you have still a few opportunities to join in on the fun in this season left.
So see you all next Saturday when it is yet again time for The Knight Rides!
Hopefully everyone enjoyed it (with apologies to Tom C and Sir Eric for not re-grouping). It showed the power of a group coming together to meet a common goal. As CoS Blackwater stated, making time on the upper climb (which wasn’t steep ) and the descent then the flat section back to the timing line was key. Little increases by each person made a big increase for the group as a whole.
