Greetings from South Florida!
Yesterday, the Tour de France finished the second stage. This stage was a unique one called ”team time trial”. There was nothing to ”try” if you wonder. It was just a bouncy of guys from each team raced together for about 50 km or so.
Like I said before, there were a lot of technique involved in the race. The team's were started in every 5 minutes, one team at a time. Therefore, they didn't race against any other team. They were racing against their own time!
And that was the most difficult thing to do. You can't see your opponents. The only thing you could do was paddle as hard as you could. Pure burning of your energy. You could see the cyclists constantly rotated their positions in their team formation. The man at the front would go all out for a short time burst while others behind him could stay in his slipstream. Research showed that the last man in the team formation would save 40% of energy compared to the man in the front. Therefore they have to push as hard as they could and stay focused.
Time trial makes me think about being a writer. When a person committed to writing a book, he would not have the luxury of competing against anyone else. Because no one else is writing the same book as his. Writing is a lonely marathon journey. A writer is only competing against his own time, or against himself. If one doesn't push oneself hard enough, nobody else would do that for him.
Have a nice day! Cheers!