Connecticut Stage Race is in the books and I’m not doing Longsjo or Giro, so the only real time trial left this season is Working Man’s. Needless to say my time trial at CTSR was less than I was hoping for, and my overall experience on the new TT bike has been pretty miserable. In fact, if anyone is looking for a 54cm Cervelo p2-sl with Rival parts that has been used so little it is a disgrace, leave me a message. I’ve decided that with my limited flexibility, the 54cm frame is not the way to go. My next build will be on something a little bigger.
That being said, my interest has turned to doing the CBTT on my road bike. Every time I go from riding the TT bike to riding the road bike it feels incredible. Last night I figured I might as well give it a shot. I especially wanted to benchmark my power output and speed in a different position. I did the race with no aero gear (including box rims), standard s/s jersey with arm warmers, and my pockets full of gear. I also did over an hour of riding before the race at zone 2ish pace.
It was a cold and damp evening, 60°F dry bulb, 53°F dew point, and very little wind. I was just happy it wasn’t raining out.
My start was too hard. I was too excited about being on the road bike I think. 1,150 watts off the line and 325W average in the first five minutes. Last year that was right around my CP5 power. My heart rate wasn’t too high and it didn’t really feel too hard.
As always I started feeling pretty horrible about the time I turned off of 225. My legs were burning, it was hard to breath, and I felt pretty slow in general. It doesn’t seem like there’s much chance to recover after this turn either. In fact I don’t think my speed topped 40 kph after making the turn. By the time I was in Concord again my power was dropping below 200W on the downhills. I was hammering the uphills a lot harder than on the TT bike to make up for it.
I had my finishing time at 25:04, and I think the results are wrong with the 26 minute time. Average power was 286W, normalized was 291W. I was really shooting for 300W, seeing as that was my CP20 on the trainer back in February. I made it about 13 minutes before my average fell below that. Bad pacing and trying to be more aero (smaller hip angle?) surely hurt the average power figure. Like I said earlier, I’m not very flexible. I think this leads to poor power output at small hip angles.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Charlie Baker Time Trial - 6/10/09
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3 comments:
Flexibility is important for your long-term viability as an athlete. Cycling also can result in development of an unbalanced musculature. You are still young so if you're unathletic now, then things will only get worse if you don't take action.
Start by finding a good massage therapist. It's worth the money. After a few sessions you might be able to make do with a foam roll. There are lots of videos on Utube to give ideas on how to use it.
Stretching and core strength, as well as work for the back of the legs (which cycling does little for) need to be addressed. You don't have to be intense about it, just consistent. A few sessions a week on the floor are worth sacrificing an hour or two of total riding time, which will easily be offset by being able to do better quality workouts during the balance of your on the bike training.
CBTT has had my time correct whenever I've gone, but the irregular start intervals seem prone to error. I like to start my timer when the rider two ahead of me goes off, so that it (should be) exactly 1:00 more than my actual time. But the guy starts people whenever he feels like it, and then notes the start time, thwarting my attempts to have an indicator of my time without having to calculate odd numbers of seconds in my head when I'm anaerobic...
Jay going back to your TT bike, do you have any specific tires you run or like for it? Or do you just stick with what you run on the road bike? I’m trying to build up my own TT rig.
my normal setup is my bontrager carbon x-lite on the front and my powertap wheel with cover on the rear. the x-lite is also my road wheel, and it is a tubular, so i just run the vittoria corsa evo cx in a 23c. if i had a dedicated TT wheelset i'd probably try something narrower. on the rear i'm just running a 23c pro3 that i use for training, nothing fancy.
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