Tuesday Night Time Trial (TNT)

June 20, 2006
Medina, Minnesota
11 Miles

This race is offering three in a series of 6 races this summer where people can complete the time trial as a team event, just like you'd see in the Tour de France. It seemed like a ton of fun and I thought I had a team together. We ended up short of the needed number of riders so I went out in the true time trial way, by myself.

Pre-Race
I haven't ridden a straight time trial in a long time and I was a little bummed about not being able to ride the team time trial. As a result, I waited until about 30 minutes to go to start warming up. It went okay and I felt pretty good heading over to the start.

I waited to put on my aero helmet until after warm-ups. I got an eye shield for the time trial helmet for Father's Day and I was psyched to give it a try. It is an interesting feeling to have the full helmet covering your ears and the eye shield on, I felt as my whole head was encased.

After warming up a while, including a couple of accelerating sprints, I pulled up to the starting area ready to go. We waited in line and left in 30 seconds intervals. I got a good hold and was ready to head off. I must have been a little nervous as I have not done a standing start in quite awhile. I couldn't get comfortable until I got started.

Got the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and GO!!! and I was off. I looked at the power meter and tried to keep the effort in check. Couldn't do much but put out a huge wattage for the first bit as I tried to get up to speed. I knew that since this race was only 11 miles long and that I could easily go above 20 mph it was going to hurt most of the time. For the first bit I felt like I was working pretty hard but the watts seemed fairly reasonable, high but not overwhelmingly so. I rolled along encased in my aero helmet feeling like I was doing pretty well. It didn't take long for a strong looking guy to catch me, he started 30 seconds back, and I tried to hold close to him for a bit. I kept the distance between us pretty tight. My shorts were not aligned quite right and I kept encouraging myself to remain in the aero position and to wait until the main downhill before the turn around to make adjustments to the skin suit. I got to the downhill pretty quickly but the sought after relief from the shorts adjustment didn't come. Oh well, "these things are supposed to hurt a lot," I kept telling myself, "you're doing it right, keep it up." I turned around, hit my split button on the power meter and started up the biggest hill on the course. I was working but trying to maintain a good pace without killing myself. Here the power meter was really helpful as I know I would have done too much if I didn't see numbers that were hard but sustainable as I went up.

The hardest part of the race was not the hill itself but keeping up a high level of effort after I crested the top of the hill and was onto the flats. Immediately the watts dropped and I had to give myself a pep talk to kick it up another notch. I kept plugging along and started to feel pretty done about 8 miles into the thing. I don't know exactly what I told myself but I tried to keep it up. I was pretty sure that I had gone out too fast as I didn't feel fast at all on the way back. When I hit the 10 mile mark I just tried to give it everything I had in a sustainable way. I hit the line feeling nauseous and knew I had given what I could. I was so shot I forgot to stop my power meter at the line.

Post Race
I tried to remember the last race that I did that lasted less than an hour and a half. It has been a long time. I know for a fact I haven't done anything as short as an hour for at least 4 years. Short races sure do hurt a lot. I suppose they end quickly as well but that was a seriously hard 26:40.

Power Data
I was really glad to have the power meter on my bike for the ride. I rode a better race because of it and it was reassuring about how I had ridden. I was definitely slower over the second half of the race. First half was 12:55, second was 13:45. That would be a sure sign of missed pacing if I didn't have other data to look at. I produced more power in the second half of the ride than the first half, exactly what you should be doing. I was pleased with that increase; it also meant that I hadn't gone too slowly in the early miles as well. The full power file is available for download at www.digititri.com/bikePower.shtml