Athens Grid Qualifier - Friday

Day one of the Speedweek trip for the Haymarket / HomeVisit team making the trip: Jared Nieters, Chris Schmidt, Chip Hoover, Bryan Vaughan, Steven Grant and Ryan Simpson.

Athens Twilight is two days of racing and partying in a really cool college town. Friday features the computrainer grid qualifier races to determine starting grid spots for the Pro race Saturday night. The Twilight race has over 150 racers, so starting up front can mean the differnece between surviving or not, or for how long.

Some video and pics of the day below...

So the way it works is they have a big stage, an announcer and 50 inch screens that show every racer's power in watts, distance, speed next to each other and the distance between racers in feet, so you know exactly where you stand when you race. They calibrate the trainers and they weigh you before you go on stage so the watts are normalized.

The race is an 8 lap simulation of the actual race course. That works out to about 8 minutes of absolute suffering. In the videos, you can see some real hurting going on. It's basically a VO2 max test on stage, no hiding.

Here is a link to an album:

Grid Qualifier Videos:

Athens Twilight Pro Grid Qualifier - Bryan Vaughan - 13th from Bryan Vaughan on Vimeo.

Watch This One! Great battle for Chris Schmidt

Athens Twilight Pro Grid Qualifier - Chris Schmidt from Bryan Vaughan on Vimeo.

Athens Twilight Pro Grid Qualifier - Steven Grant from Bryan Vaughan on Vimeo.