Paul Blackmore writes…
Did a quick dash to Pisa at the weekend to ride the Trofeo Berti Caffe cronometro a squadra, with my brother, Jim.
See 
Paul’s pics
This was such a good opportunity I was even motivated to keep training for the whole of October – long past my usual hibernation date – to ride a 5 up team time trial around the walls of Lucca. I was part of my brothers Bike Village team. We had 4 laps of the walls to do for 16.8 kms, with motorbike outriders clearing our path, two following cars blasting their horns and a TV motorbike capturing our efforts.
Although I took my TT bike with me, the Italian contingent were on their road bikes but it was a pretty tight circuit so we weren’t disadvantaged that much. We were in the 2nd group of 3 to start and each time we past the finish I could hear the announcer shout ‘in vantaggio la squadra Bike Village 15 secondi…’, so I knew we were doing OK.
The team behind us were pretty useful but we managed to beat them to set the fastest time so far of 22:32. It wasn’t until the disc clad team off in the 3rd group came in with a 21:50 that we slipped down.
After the last of the 18 teams finished we ended up 6th, the winning team being ‘Maggi’, the national team time trial champions in 20:51.
Great fun, great weather and great atmosphere, full report and pics to following in a week or two.
