Pat

Where do I go from here?

It's been a little over two weeks since the Utah State Time Trial and I'm feeling a little unfocused in my training. Although, after five months of having every workout preplanned, it's nice to be able to just go out and ride my bike. But, I've had some time off and now it's time to start getting serious again about my training and goals.

Initially, after the Time Trial I was left wanting more. While I'm really happy with my race results, I had been focused going 40k not just 30k. And while it may be a some time before I can go 40k in less than an hour I still want to do a full 40k race just to set a benchmark. It turns out that Idaho had a their State TT scheduled for June 20^th and I planned on making the trip up to do that race only to find out it had been canceled for road maintenance. Washington State has their State TT on July 25^th, but as of right now I'm scheduled to work. So, unless I can change my schedule around it looks like I'll have to find a Time Trial after I ride the Leadville 100 in August. Which is fine because I'm ready to get off the Time Trial bike for a while.

With 8 weeks to go till Leadville I have three areas I'll need to concentrate on.

-First and foremost is going long. The goal for Leadville is to have a great day riding with my friend Thor and if at all possible to finish in under 12 hours. If I want to be able to ride for 12hours in the race I definitely need to ride more than my current average of six hours per week.

-Second , I need to spend time on my Mountain Bike. I love Mountain Biking, but I haven't spent any real time off road since 2003 when I started doing IronMan distance triathlons. So some time getting my Mtn. Bike handling skills back is warranted.

-Third, I need to continue building my Threshold Power. While endurance pacing for a race like Leadville is only a percentage of the power I would use for a 60 minute TT the higher that power is the the better the race will go.

That's all for now. I need to spend some time with my work and family schedule and try and fit in all this training.

Train Hard and Smart,

Pat

Time Trial Data

Looking at the file from my Time Trial there is some interesting information that may help me race better in the future. Essentially the race can be broken down into five parts, the initial acceleration, the first half (out) to the turnaround, the breaking and re-acceleration at the turnaround, the second half (back), and the push at the end.

00:00 to 00:22 401w

My initial acceleration went great. In my practice races I had played with different gears to see how fast I got up to speed and what the "cost" in wattage or effort was. I found that ~800w and a harder gear got me to 25mph slightly faster (2 seconds) than ~400w and an easier gear. But, I decided on the easier gear to try and not burn that match . I hit 25.4mph at 15 seconds averaging 450w and was in the aerobars with my wattage under control by 22 seconds. Just like I wanted.

00:23 to 23:43 235w

Looking at the graph it trends down to the right. But there is more to the story, from 2:00 to 5:15 I spent the whole time above 250w averaging 258w. In fact, from 2:00 to 8:00 I averaged 250w spending lots of time above my target of 240ish. For the first part I have an explanation, not an excuse, the pavement is horrible and I was riding by feel trying to avoid some very bad frost surges. I think going too hard for this six minutes ended up hurting my race. My average from 8:00 to the turnaround at 23:43 was much lower at 225w.

23:43 to 24:05

The turnaround went fairly well. It only took me 6 seconds from the time I stopped pedaling till I was back on the power. I should have gone one gear easier to help me accelerate again and I tried to hit it fairly hard...but I was hurtin' at that point.  

24:05 to 44:20 218w

The tail wind was nice as my power was starting to fade. Actually I was doing OK till 32:30 averaging 230w. Then I hit the bad section of concrete, hard! I hit one of the frost surges hard enough that my aerobars ended up tilted down about 5 degrees. This had happened 3 times during my test ride so I had taken them apart and cleaned everything before putting them back together and torquing everything down. Looking at that section I stopped pedaling 4 times in an effort to avoid hitting other frost surges. My average wattage was down to 212w.

44:20 to 46:04 287w

I hit the last section as hard as I could trying to leave nothing at the line. It's interesting that I went hard and faded 3 times. I was dying when I crossed the finish line. Very Happy.

Conclusion-

As far as the poor pavement goes, everyone races on the same course and while I had some issues with it, that's just life. Per-riding the course was helpful and if I can do it in the future I will.

The biggest thing that I could have done better is stick to my pacing plan. If I hadn't spent that 6 minutes 10w over my plan I should have been able to average better over the whole race. Mentally, it’s still difficult for me to trust the PowerTap when I look down and I'm 1-2mph under my goal speed. Trusting my PowerTap has got to be a key for future races.

Train Hard and Smart

Pat

Race Report

My start time was 12:05 so I showed up 2 hours prior to get my race number and get everything setup. I did my prescribed 20min warm up, ate my cliff blocks and headed over to the starting line about 10 minutes prior to my start time. About 2 minutes before my start time the official told us we would be racing 30k, not the 20k I had been told by the promoter just 48hrs earlier, which was fine as I'd been training for 40k anyways. Going out I adjusted my goal wattage down to 235-245w to account for the extra 10k. At about 5 minutes in I passed my 30 second man, and thought to my self am I going too hard? Then about 30 second later I was passed by two riders and I thought, am I going to easy? No, I just need to race my race and stick to the plan.

At the turnaround what had been a quartering headwind out of the WNW at 14mph turned into a quartering tailwind and my speed picked up a bit. Then with 5 miles to go my power started to drop off and I was really struggling. But I gutted it out as best I could and with a mile to go I gave it everything I had, finishing strong.

So what were the numbers?

• First half- 23:50, 235w, 23.2mph, Ave HR 173
• Second Half – 22:14, 225w, 24.8mph, Ave HR 172
• Total 46:04.6 , 230w, 24.0mph, Ave HR 173

All in all it was a great race! In 5 months I increased my speed on the bike from 22mph to 24mph. That's huge! But I cant help feeling I left something on the table. For whatever reason I wasn't able to produce the power on race day that I did in practice. I know I'm stronger than that, I just have to figure out why. And I will.

Here's the good news. In the last five months I've spent 94 hours, 58 minutes, and 15 seconds on my bike training. My Threshold Power has gone up 11.4% and my weight down 5%. During my last flight physical my resting HR was 48 and my blood pressure was 103/48. I have absolutely no doubt that training for this Time Trial has had a tremendous positive effect on me both physically and mentally. And I couldn't be happier.

Now where's my Mountain Bike? I'm training for Leadville!

Train Hard and Smart

Pat

24 hours to go

The Work is done, I'm as strong as I'm going to get for race day. All that is left is to let my body finish absorbing the 93 hours and 7 minutes of training I've done over the past 5 months and top it off with a few extra carbs.

The Bike is ready, the set up is solid and there wont be any last minute changes just before the race. Just a a quick bath and some lube on the chain.

The Data has all been collected and numbers crunched. My pacing strategy is solid, keep the power in the 240-249 range for the first half of the race and if I feel good in the second half I can bump it up 10 watts. All I have to do is pay attention to my PowerTap!

Just 23:48 to go

Train Hard and Smart

Pat