Guerini reunites the team to give race orders

As good as a gregario he was, Guerini was the only VIP captain of the day who reunited the whole team to decide the race orders and tell us what we would have done in the race. I think this is where we signed down our victory. We were focused and the orders were very effective and simple:
We needed to arrive in 5 in order to stop the clock (team of 11) but we also wanted to be a good team and ride a bit together for the sake of the event. So we would have ride a bit together and then started to increment the pace in order to gain a 40-42 km/h pace. Guerini then told us that we would have made short changes in order to keep up the high speed.
Part of the team was also a retired pro cyclist, Daniel Lloyd. Wow guys, this dude was one hell of a good guy!I’m very happy to have met him. Such a nice guy, very simple and good!
So the plan was to stay at least in 6 until the last km in case a tyre would have blown out or something (there was the ammiraglia behind us but u knows…such speeds are hard to recovery) and then as soon as we passed the last km we would have sprinted the hell out of ourselves.
Guerini would have made the pace in front of everybody and Lloyd would have sit behind the 5 in order to be sure we wouldn’t have lost the “sixth”.
Well…nuff said that after we started the pace was absurd…we were going at 45-47…without warm up. After 2 turns we lost already 2 teammates and after 2 km’s we lost other 3. We were 6 left and I mean, I was about to die too. Ok I’m trained but not that much to keep a 45 speed average without even warming up, so I was, after 10km’s, about to give up. Then Lloyd managed to incorouge me and keeping me in the pack of 6 with a bit of help ahahah (some little bumps in the “azz” you know…ehehe) and after 2 km I was over the initial crisis and started going good, very good.
I was really suffering but hey a time trial is like that. all the time at max, over the max.
Never gone under 180 heart rate in the whole race, never…I was about to die.
But then we entered the last km, we entered the cobblestone part of the very centre of Milan near Duomo.
Wow, there was sssssooo many people, screaming and yelling. I was stoked. It was ubelievable. It seemed like we were pro, I mean the people and the mass was the same there was for the pro. They knew we weren’t pro but yet they continued screaming and yelling, it was CRAAAZY. We made the last 2 turns and at the last turn we entered the final straight all 6 together and I screamed to the mates “I’m gonna sprint, I’m gonna sprint the hell out of me”. I wanted to give back the help they gave me in the first 5 km, so I started sprinting like a madman and the others followed.
I cut the line at first place with the speaker yelling my name with the time of the team…everybody was screaming.
I was so tired that after 100m the 6 riunited to cheer and congratulates and I fell on the ground ahah…I was done, almost dying. Lloyd congratulated with me for the sprint. He was yelling at me at how fast I was going. he arrived third I think. Second arrived another awesome teammates of mine, Christian, a beast, a superb rider who couldn’t believe how well I recovered and resist the first 5 km’s. we were so happy!

In the end we won with 6” over the second team (Zanini team) and a huge gap over the others.

Guerini before the start said “do we want to win or what?….then let’s go get this win”….and we won indeed!!!!

photo and words by: Giacomo Cioffi