Charlie Baker Time Trial – 8/20

My legs felt good on Wednesday after two days of recovery from the weekend’s crit-fest. With all the racing that’s been going on in the past month or two, I’ve done very little steady-state training. I figured the CBTT would be good prep for GMSR next week, especially with the new TT. I left all of the aero gear at home, figuring that I wouldn’t be able to use it at GMSR anyways. In truth I think I just didn’t feel like taking the time to set up my bike.

I really wanted to practice pacing myself because I’ve blown myself up in almost every TT I’ve done this season. One discussion that I’ve read recently suggested starting of at 5-10% less power for the first 5 mintues than your target average power. Seeing as I’m usually in the 15%-20% too high range, I figured it’d be worth a shot.

My 30s man and 60s man were both teenage girls. I passed the both in the first 2 miles and felt like I was killing it. A mile later I got passed by the racer staged 1-minute behind me, then the racer 1.5-minutes behind me, and then the racer 30-seconds behind me. Ouch. Talk about a blow to your motivation. I wanted to quit right there.

The three racers all passed me right around Carlisle center. I found it interested that they really didn’t put much ground on me on the downhill sections. Unlike earlier in the season, my pacing strategy was not to maintain consistent power output over varying terrain, but instead to pedal harder going uphill and softer going downhill. My power was varying as much as +/- 100W depending on the terrain. The racers that passed me going downhill out of Carlisle were on fancy TT rigs, and I would have expected them to crush me on the downhill, but that wasn’t the case. I was soft-pedaling around 200W without any aero gear and they weren’t extending their gap on me. They must’ve been pedaling at like 100W or something super easy. As soon as we hit a slight flat to uphill section though, they took off.

I ended up finishing around 25:20, 23.2 mph average. Power output suffered big time on Monument Road, largely due to saddle discomfort. Along that section my power feel all the way to the 230W range, way below threshold. That may have been due to a lack of TT training in recent weeks. Riding with my forearms pressed hard against my handlebars has to be one of the most uncomfortable positions possible.