Data, Thoughts and More....

Its Monday morning and yeah, you guessed it, still hurting over not winning my age group, but thats not to say its all bad. I turned in a time of 52:59 for an average speed of 26.72mph. To go back to when I just got back into cycling last July, I recall thinking I would do time trials (no mass start events) and my initial goal would be to break the hour in the 40k. That was goal number one. Going back even further when I first started cycling for competition in the late 80's (I was in college at Ohio State)my first 40k I did 1:03 and I was told at the time that that was a really good time for only cycling a year or less. Later that summer I went 1 hour and change and then my third attempt I went 58 minutes. I did my 4th and final TT on that course and although I dont recall what time it was exactly, it was 56 minutes or faster. This was with no aero equipment except clip-ons and a skinsuit mind you. So being that this was my first 40k TT in over 17 years I would bet, to go a theoretical 56:13 I cannot be too upset. I got that number by using my ave speed for this event over 25 miles instead of 23.7 which is what states was this year. I am also really happy ot be only 2:37 down on Paul Martin (ex-pro) and only 1:22 on Eric Hodos (winner of Presque Isle in April) who beat me over 12.5 miles in April by over a minute!! I also want to congratulate Richard Lewis of Team Echelon on the 40-45 win.

I also had an average wattage of 274 watts and raced the event at my lowest weight of 144 pounds. This gave me a power to weight ratio of 4.18w/kg on that day. My functional threshold on a road bike is 284 watts (4.33w/kg). If your wondering why I didnt race at my ftp, its a multifold answer. First its very common to not be able to sustain your ftp on your time trial bike, but that the aero advantage more than offsets that. I am faster on my TT bike so..... Second, being that I hadnt done any testing (nor would care to) at the 40k (25mile) distance, I didnt want to go out at 284 watts to blow up spectacularly before the finish. Bearing in mind how poorly mile 13-18 went yesterday I might have been wise in my estimation to back down the ave. watts by 10, but my heart tells me otherwise.

So whats the conclusion? Well, first off, keep training and raise the ftp and do more 40k's. Historically if you look at how fast I dropped my times in the 40k, if I do that again I am looking at being right there in the top 3. Its really that simple!! I think mentally I raced the race smart, I never gave up and positive pep talks like this "This is the State TT, you want to be State TT Champion so dig, dig deeper" were common. But regardless and yeah I am making lousy excuses after the fact, 40k's are hard and it takes a few to build that confidence to know that regardless of how much pain your in that you CAN go 0.1 or 0.2 mph faster the WHOLE time and you will make it to the finish without blowing up!! Yeah-its gonna put you deeper in the hurt tank, but thats what time trialing is all about!!

Results are here: http://www.team-cobc.com/pdfs/GroveportTT.htm

Map of the course here: http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/oh/groveport/527384957