What a great week this is in New England for bike racing. The only times I ride my bike is in a race or to get coffee. How great is that? If the races were longer you might call that building fitness, but these races are all short so it’s really more of a peak. On second thought, forget those terms, how about we just call it action-packed fun week?
Longsjo is tomorrow and I am excited. I didn’t really care for this race back in 2008 (GASP, I SAID IT) but then they did away with the TT that no one could possibly like, as well as the grind to the top of Wawa. Those were my 2 least favorite parts of the race. Now we have a true flat TT and sort of an Ardennes Classics style road race. Much better!
I promised more race reports this week with the whole 7 races in 9 days thing, but the problem with that is I’m always racing or working. Tuesday was Exeter Criterium and Wednesday was the CBTT, and for various reasons I don’t have a whole lot of details about them, making this easy, so let’s do it.
Exeter Criterium Pro/Am
Ever have one of those races where nothing goes right? That’s how this one will go down in the books for me, and here’s why:
1) 1) Sitting in heavy 128 traffic worrying about missing your start causes stress
2) 2) I forgot to bring water with me, but luckily internet celebrity Dave bailed me out
3) 3) I didn’t eat enough and got hungry, but luckily we parked next to a sweet bakery
4) 4) I forgot to bring sunglasses and gloves
5) 5) Landen pointed out that I had excessive stubble on my legs
6) 6) My metal chainstay protector fell off during warmup and got jammed in my chainring/chain
7) 7) Lining up at the back of a pro/am crit is bad for your confidence
8) 8) Getting caught behind a crash on lap 3 and having to chase back on is tiring
9) 9) Could more people have possibly flatted in front of me? (as least I didn’t flat)
10 10) I’m not strong enough to close gaps over and over and over
And that guy on the front wearing an iamtedking jersey was doing 30mph all day long I got dropped after about 20 minutes. I was mad because I felt like I should have been able to hang. This stupid stuff got me all flustered and I started riding like a triathlete in a cat5 crit. Sprinting out of turns way longer than I should be and then braking because I overdid it, over and over. So much wasted energy, so stupid. I deserved to be shelled. It was a good experience though.
Anyways, back to my comfort zone…
Charlie Baker Time Trial
It was certainly debatable whether or not it was smart to do the CBTT on Wednesday with Longsjo starting on Friday. From a training stress point of view it doesn’t seem bad to me. My total ride time was a whopping 35 minutes. Sure, 23 minutes of that is at threshold, but something about the TT bike never really feels very draining. It might just be a mental thing due to the fact that I can’t seem to TT at anything more than hard tempo power. During the effort it hurts, but it’s a weird hurt and I usually feel fine about an hour later. I don’t think doing the CBTT will cost me anything at Longsjo, and it was nice to have a final tune up, but I might have to reevaluate this statement next Tuesday.
In each of the 3 previous CBTTs I’ve done this year I’ve gotten slower and slower. I set my PR on a fast night but with record low watts. That night was the maiden voyage for my TT bike and my aerobars slipped forward. That slippage probably contributed to the low watts. However, I also think it contributed to the fast time by inadvertently increasing my aeroness.
Last week I moved my saddle setback much closer to my road position and found that to be much more comfortable. I didn’t have power data but I was slow that night. My handlebars were also higher.
This week I went the opposite direction. I kept my saddle in the near-road position (eyeballing it of course) but I lowered my handlebars to about 1 click below where I had them on the first night. I was worried this would pinch off my hip angle but it felt fine rolling around. Better than a stupid steep saddle position for sure.
I’m beginning to think your hip angle is something that only tri geeks and TT specialists should worry about. I’m not saying that they’re wrong, but there’s definitely this whole adaptation thing you need to consider. There seems to be very little info out there on how to approach your TT fit if you’re not riding the TT bike a lot. It might be one of those things that varies a lot from person to person but for me, I need my saddle position close to my road bike (~7.5cm setback). Otherwise I’m working all the wrong muscles, sort of like a less extreme version of running.
Once again I had no power data. I’ve barely been riding with my Powertap lately since I don’t have one on my race wheels and I forgot to fix it after last week’s problem. This week it was just 0 watts from the start, so I didn’t get fooled or even have to worry about it. I just paced myself by feel and speed. The downside is that I can’t evaluate my aeroness.
It was a windy night. Talking about wind on any previous night this year seemed totally insignificant compared to this week. But it was out of the west, so lots of crosswinds going to Carlisle and on Monument St and a fabulous tailwind on 225. My CBTT model suggests this would only be 5 seconds slower relative to a perfectly calm night. If the same wind was out of the east (instead of the west), it would be a whopping 36 seconds slower. Don’t expect fast times on nights where the wind is out of the east.
I got to the Carisle Rotary in 10:07, which is the third time this year that’s been my split. Coming down 225 was incredible. I was barely pedaling down that hill and doing over 35mph. Hooray tailwind.
No matter what, I always always always blow up on Monument Road. Tonight I tried something a bit different. Instead of trying to power over the rollers, especially the little hill by the town line, I kept a much more steady power output. I did slow down noticeably more, like 16.6mph by the town line, but I think it was better. It wasn’t any slower (speed-wise, not power-wise) and I felt much less pain. Win win! I felt at least 10x better going over the top of the last hill.
My official finish time was 22:48. My computer had me at 22:35 and I have no idea why that’s so far off. Either way, I figure 22:48 is 16 seconds faster than my 22:48 on May 26 if you normalize the weather conditions. I’m pretty happy with this because it was actually a somewhat enjoyable TT. No funny pains or anything like that. Heck, I even forgot to use chamois cream! Hopefully I can find one more gear for a special effort at Longsjo.
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