Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Tri club's first time trial was last night. Had to incorporate this into my ride.

Of course it wasn't all about a short burst of pain. Spent the first hour and a half on the XC Carbon with some base miles. I'm really starting to like training more on the hartail. It's making short routes a bit longer in time since the speeds are down. Still averaging just under 30 km/h though with the slicks.

It's also allowing me to ride roads that I would so not ripe down with any of the road bikes. Legs were feeling great but something was a little out of whack. Checking my heartrate monitor and I'm seeing weird numbers. I know I have a strong heart but when its showing just above a recovery pace number and I'm climbing a hill something is wrong. Battery time.

Back to the car and a bike switch. Since I'm TT bikeless now with the Trinity in a new home and since I do not have a T16 hanging on my wall it was old faithful. The OCR is still fast, I guess the Ultegra gear and deep dish wheels help. Don't need no stinking areo bars.

I did get placed a bit out of whack in the start line up which played to a disadvantage to me later in the route. 3,2,1 go. Hammered right out of the gate and down on the bars. Legs feel good for the moment.

Our course is very hilly and not the best pavement. Means you are working hard and riding smart to go fast. So back to the staging part. Carrots!! You need that carrot in front of you to chase down. 30 seconds between rider means they are just in sight when you start. The problem for me is I ate up all my carrots faster than a bunny rabbit on crack. At the turn around I had passed everyone in front of me. Not good. This gets me in mountain bike race mood where you are defending not attacking.

I know I backed it down a hair on the return trip, not much but in a TT dropping 5 percent makes a huge difference. I know I could have pushed a bit harder on the hills had I had some riders in front to chase. The reason I know I had backed down was that I'm looking behind me all the time to see if anyone is gaining. I knew they weren't but I'm still not in attack mood. Should have did a split on the course at the turn around.

Crossed the line a few minutes later. 37 km/h over the 15km course. I'm .2km/h slower than my best ever time and that was last year on the Trinity TT bike. I'm pretty happy considering the legs are sore. Wait the legs are always sore!!! 4th fastest of the day. It's a rain day so I think it's going to be time on the trainer tonight.

Gotta roll, time for work

Later

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Matt you sandbagger. You should be winning all of those local races. Sounds like you should line up with the fast guys next time so there are no excuses. You coming to Ottawa for the tour this year?