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