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.

I mounted up to warm up, started pedaling, looked at my power meter and stopped pedaling. I zeroed the SRM once again, just to be sure these wattages I saw were for real. I started pedaling again. Same readings. Panic time.

Either my SRM was reading stupid low numbers, meaning something was wrong with it, or I was having an exceptionally bad day. I told myself to just spin into it. Eventually the watts would come. After about 30 minutes' spinning the watts did indeed materialize. The problem was I was really feeling the effort to produce them. Tonight was not going to be pleasant.

To make matters worse, we had an awful headwind going out. Last week's headwind was bad enough. This one was worse, much worse.

Actually the windy conditions helped me quite a bit in that they simplified my race strategy. I didn't have much to give, so I decided to pour it all into the headwind to save as much time as possible; then limp home with whatever I had left.

That turned out to be a good strategy. I caught my 1, 2 and 3-minute men/women before the turn. I made one awful turn. I braked too late, shot past the cone by about 8 feet, and executed a painfully slow 180° turn. Comedy in slow motion. From there I hoisted the main sail and rode the wind home.

And I really mean I sailed. The ride home was quiet. I wasn't able to put enough power into the pedals to turn the tailwind into a headwind. It was so quiet I learned I have a squeak between my right cleat and pedal.

Results wise. this TT went well. I cut about 30 seconds off my best time to date. Power was down. Power going out was barely as high as my best. Power coming home was dismal. I owe the improved time to a new position, which may also have contributed to the lower power.

I took 3rd overall on the evening, 1st in my Cat 4/5 field. With two night's racing to go, I'm leading the series among the 4/5's. The pressure's on to keep it up.