Two Wheel Blogs

Hey the weather's been just too good here lately to not be out riding. Since my last update I raced the third of five races in the Wednesday Night Timetrial Series, followed by a better than expected 3x20 session yesterday, Thursday.

Ah, but who wants to talk about pain and suffering in intervals. Let's talk timetrial. There's plenty of pain and suffering there too.

You know how some times you warm up and you're just not sure your legs will come around? Nine times out of ten they eventually wake up. Somehow in the excitement you find it and your performance comes through. Sometimes you're even surprised at how good that elusive performance turns out to be. That was not the case for me Wednesday night.

Last night we held the second of five races in the Wednesday night Timetrial series.

Despite weather conditions much improved over the previous week's race, turnout was a bit lighter last evening. Only a couple of dozen, give or take, riders showed up to test themselves.

Weather wise, temperatures at race time were in the middle 70's. Winds were out of the east at about 7-9 mph.

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Yesterday was TT number two for me this year. I raced the 2008 Tour of Hermann Timetrial.

Conditions were cooler (53.1°F | 11.7°C) and more windy (9.2mph | 14.8km/h | 4.1m/s) than I might have preferred; but you never get to pick the weather on race day. The course and wind directions worked out to be a cross wind for the first ~1 mile followed by ~4 miles of headwind to the turnaround. Total length of the timetrial: 10 miles.

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Last night was the first Timetrial in the Big Shark Wednesday night series. Thirty-five of us braved the 25-35mph winds to test ourselves on the flat out-and-back 15km course.

I'll save you the suspense. I managed a 4th place overall finish with an official time of 21:24.14. In case you have any doubts, let me just say it right out. This was an extraordinarily painful 20 minutes. I sort of wish I'd worn a heart rate monitor. I'm sure I would have seen my true maximum heart rate at the finish.

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I had a peak at my upcoming calendar today and realized it's pretty full between now and the end of the month. Counting it all up, there are 2 crits and 5 separate TT's.

That set off a bit of a panic, because it was only yesterday that I began training in the TT position. I might have to race myself into being comfortable on my TT bike.

Oh but wait, can you ever be really comfortable on a TT bike?

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Now there's a title that should get some attention. Maybe the wrong kind. We'll see.

Sorry to disappoint, but in this case I mean the Timetrial position. It's a position I can't claim to have much familiarity with in recent times. My back problems have kept me off my TT bike and out of this position for pretty much 2 years now. Tonight I decided enough was enough. Time to once again assume the position.

When I log workouts like this they always get labeled as "time in position". That's a good workout goal, don't you think? No pressure on wattages or speed, not even duration. I'm only interested in accumulating time in the timetrial position. I'll let the watts come later.

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