Team Time Trial Pacing Strategy????
Loooooong Story short, my individual time trial this weekend has just been turned into a TTT 
See the Guess Our 40K TT Time thread for the background- but basically I'm now teamed up with a 45-50 yo dude for 26.7 miles of TTT fun.
While this guy isn't one of the strongest cyclists out here- he's no slouch either. I'm gonna guess he'd average 22-23mph on his own. I'm obviously our teams weakest link. Soooooo, the question is, anyone have a suggestion for the best way to strategize this team? I'd like to take a fare share of pulls, but frankly just sucking his wheel for 26.7 miles might be tough enough! Also, any recommendation for communicating with each other during the race? What happens if I blow up? It's just a little over an hour right? I can suffer that long, right?
Oh crap, what have I done!!!!!?
Dan Socie- this is all your fault!!!!!
Comments
If you really think he is that much stronger, I would like him decide what he wants to do. He may be comfortable taking 10 min pulls and recovering for 2 or 3. Maybe he wants to go 5/1. What ever it is discuss it with him before hand. When it is your turn to pull do what you can bad stay smooth and consistant. If you are dying, flick your elbow out and let him come up to the front.
The two biggest mistake I made in my one and only TTT were pulling to long at first (which made the second half really tough) and I was not good at getting right on Jim's wheel after we switched positions. That made me have to work to get back on and it was tough. The quicker you can get back into his draft zone the better.
Get out and practice a few times before the race with him. Jim and I did this as our warm up.
Nemo, what timing. I just did my first TTT of the year last night, well kinda. I got popped off on one of the hills at close to the halfway point. I was with 3 younger, stronger, lighter cat 2 guys, but it was fun while it lasted. 370 NP @ 30mph. Needless to say, it was a strong team which took first place by almost a minute.
After I got popped, my goal was not to let any teams behind us pass me. Mission accomplished but it was not fun. Our format is 3rd guy across the line, so you can have a 4th pop or get a mechanical.
If they need you to finish, just like Matt said, stay on his wheel and make sure they don't hit the hills too hard, then again, you don't have any right?
Good luck. TTTs are fun, when you don't get dropped.
Dave
Have you riden with this guy in TTT formation before? If not, when you go to come off the front you might want to get out of your aerobars and into your regular bars. This lets him know that you are pulling off and also gives you more control as your drop back. Also the change from aero position immedaitely starts to disapate speed. If you are comfortable in TTT formation then just move off the front and ease up the pressure on your pedals slightly. Once your shoulder is even with his hip start dropping back in his draft. You want lose as little speed as possible droping back to concern energy.
When you are riding on his wheel you probably want to stay out of your areobars. This way you can stay close on his wheel and it is also safer. Just up to you as far as how comfortable you are riding in line in aerobars. I will do it on the track, but don't on the road.
If you start to lose contact with his wheel shout out "back off!" This is the universal signal for slow your butt down. As the weaker (not sure I buy this) team member you dictate the pace. Again, it doesn't do him any good to ride way from you. The important aspect of this is to keep your pace consistant. If all you can hold is 21 for 3 minutes at a time when you are on the front, then he needs to keep his pace around 21 when he gets on the front. If he starts riding at 24, you are not getting any recovery, so your pulls will become shorter and shorter until he is doing all the work and he will slow down anyway.
Finally is strategy for the finish. Since the finish is based off the second rider (in your case) coming across the finish line, you will want to treat the finish like a lead out. Once you get within about 100 meters from the finish the person in the back will start speeding up to try and pass the front rider. The idea is to get the two bikes to overlap side by side at the finish line. Think of this as using the draft to basically push the second bike up. It shaves a few hundredths of a second off the finish which is all you will need to win you category. Besides it feels cool.
Have fun. TTT's are always a blast.
Sorry- I couldn't get MooJo to ride up front, so this will have to do. Moo Jo keeping control of all my good luck charms as I warmed up on the trainer.
Thank you everyone for the great advice. It really did help quite a bit as this course was in Virginia and was actually a bit hilly (nothing big, but lots of rollers and false flats). Your advice also gave me the confidence to control the pace from behind my teammates wheel and not let him drop me. We had a great race and a lot of fun. Jim was great and even made efforts to ensure I got to do the pulling anytime we passed another team in front of us (which we did more than I expected). Very cool! We finished in 1:14 for the 26.7 miles. We had a few communication gaps (mainly 'cause it's just so hard to hear) but given the fact that we were teamed up just 2 days ago and neither of us knew the course, I'd say we did OK. In fact, I think we actually held back a little too much
Oh well, next year! And yeah, I'm TOTALLY doing this again next year!
PS- An interesting strategy tip that we discovered by accident. About 10 min before we had to roll over to our start, Jim realized his PT LYC wasn't reading his HRM (he recently purchased the used hub and LYC). No problem, I know the LYC and show him how to walk through the steps to get it to "Learn" the HRM. Hand the LYC back to him and he looks down and says "holy crap, I hope that's not my heart rate- it's 124, that's way too high!". I immediately realized what happened, looked at my Garmin and confirmed "nope, your ok, that's MY heart rate. Crap, I programmed your computer to read my heart rate!".
No time to fix it. So for the whole race, Jim is monitoring MY heart rate!!! 
This actually turned out to be a good thing. First, Jim immediately got a sense for when my HR was going into the red zone, and second, if he lost my HRM signal, he knew I was falling off the back!
Soooooooo, if you have two riders with very different abilities, and both have HRMs- you might consider programing the stronger rider to be able to see the weaker riders heart rate!
Oh- and here's a pic of me and Jim together after the race. We had such a great time! Note the amount of water we are consuming! IT WAS HOT!