Hearing the sponsor losing his temper behind them, the domestiques who were only there to accompany him immediately fell silent, not daring to say another word.
Zhou Ming directly warned them that if they lost again, they could get lost. It was clear he was still furious.
They decisively increased their power output, picking up their speed as they launched a chase after Huang Chong's five-man group, which had broken away from the peloton and was steadily pulling farther ahead.
Before long, with their all-out pursuit, the gap between them began to close.
This left Liu Junjie, who had just moved to the front to pull and had promised Huang Chong before the race, feeling extremely displeased:
Still can't shake you off, huh?
He glanced at the mileage on his bike computer and saw that the total distance had already passed 45 kilometers. Gritting his teeth, he shifted the chain onto a smaller cog with his shifter, then accelerated again while maintaining the same cadence.
But as his speed increased, his heart rate rapidly rose from the Zone Four threshold toward anaerobic Zone Five.
The heaviness in his thighs also intensified sharply.
While pulling at the front, an average speed of 39 km/h was already the fastest Liu Junjie could manage.
That was also his lactate threshold. He was destined not to sustain it for long.
He pedaled with everything he had, stood up to rock the bike for a while, and barely held on for around two kilometers before his heart rate completely blew up.
Then, the rapid breathing from his full-power attack and the fatigue flooding his thighs with lactate as he rocked the bike in an anaerobic state instantly brought him crashing back down to earth.
Without question, that all-out pull had completely drained the energy from