NJ State ITT Championship

There are many reasons one can find to torture oneself with a 40k TT. Some that I found were, I’ve never ridden one, my parents live within 15 miles of the course so I could bring the kids and score a few points with both my parents and my wife (who chose to stay home instead of watch me start and finish a TT – I’ll never understand it either), my teammates were gung-ho about it, and last but not least I could get a Powertap file out of it.

I’ve been taking big gulps of Smilie’s Koolaid for a couple of years now. I prepared by riding lazy laps in the park at the crack of dawn as prescribed by Craig Upton. Good stuff…. a few tempo laps here, some threshold laps there, a bit of endurance, and recovery when it is needed. I traded Saran wrap for a TT helmet, a teammate lent me a front trispoke, and the nice people at FSA sold me a 54t chainring.

I know my own power numbers pretty well; I know what I am capable of and what I am not. I really went into this thing with the goal of seeing what my Functional Threshold is. Functional Threshold for those who don’t use power is the average watts you can hold for one hour if someone holds a gun to your head. Some exercise physiologists (Andrew Coggan) think FT is the best predictor of performance and usually correlates highly with LT, V4, OBLA, MSS and a host of other acronyms. The gist of it is “How hard can you pedal, boy, and fer how long?”

I scouted the course the afternoon before and realized that the best strategy with the prevailing winds would be to take it easy (relatively) on the way out and use a bit more power on the way back up the very slight grade and into a slight headwind. That is easier said that done.

I was not so happy with my warm-up and was a little worried about not being my best. I went out to the start line and got ready to go. I knew the two guys in front of me so I asked my 30 second man what his goal was, so I did not blow up trying to chase him. He said he would like a 55:xx but did not know if that was going to happen. My own goal was something under an hour but I thought that I could do a 57:xx if the planets all lined up.

I broke the course down into 6-mile segments so I had a clue as to where I was. The first 6 miles went by fast: 347 watts with an average speed of 29.3. I was gaining ground on both my 30 second and 1 minute men with my 1.5 minute man just off in the distance. I picked my way through them between miles 6 and 8 or so. With them behind me I got a little scared that I was going too hard and settled into a rhythm with an average power of 337 and a speed of 28.4 for the second 6 mile section.

The turn around was a little sketchy only because it was not a closed course and there were cars coming up from behind. I carefully took over the car lane to squash any of the drivers’ thoughts of passing me while I turned, and made the turnaround slowly and uneventfully. I had the good sense to downshift a bit so I could sprint out of the turn and get back up to speed quickly.

I was feeling good and really glad to know I was halfway home. I tried to pick up the power as I was now into a headwind and a very slight uphill. I thought I had picked up the power, but the Powertap does not lie. 342 Average 26.4 mph. There is a little gain there but I have to say that I thought I was adding more like 15 watts, not 5. One of the guys I passed later told me that up until the turn around he had me in sight, but that I took off like a rifle shot. I think this speaks more to how much fatigue starts to accumulate in your legs than any power I had in mine. I passed 2 or 3 more people on this segment; I did not catch their names.

Once I was at the 18 mile point things got hard. Parts were going numb so I had to get out of the aero position a couple of times. The voices were no longer whispering, they were shouting. They were telling me that my rear tire was going flat so I told them I was going to continue pedaling until I felt the rim. It felt like the road had turned to sand. I looked down at the tire to see how flat it was and knew I still had time before I was on the rim. I felt the tire fishtailing a bit and pedaled through it. I was hoping for a 5k sign but no luck. After what felt like about 90 minutes I did find a 1k to go sign and poured what I had left onto the road. The last 6 miles had an average power of 335, 25.2 mph. The last minute I managed an average of 389 watts.

I stopped and felt my tire. It had not lost any air…. My legs were flat, not the tire.

I did not try to time myself, as simple math eludes me at threshold, but knew I had a decent TT from the time of the guys who came in behind me. My 30 second man had a 57:xx and I knew I had put at least a minute into him. I stood around for a few minutes but did not think they were going to have the official times for a while, so I decided to leave. My legs hurt so much that I actually had to lift them into the car. I told a teammate that I thought something was changing with my legs and he quipped back “It’s not your legs, dude, its your head.”

In retrospect, I see that I could have had a slightly better time if I had the discipline to start a little bit easier and finish against the wind a little bit harder. I can work a little bit on my position on the bike. The best part of the day though is after countless hours training, having a ride where you are outside of yourself, pushing against what you thought your limits were, and winning the arguments against the voices. And in the legs versus equipment disagreement, I’m changing my vote to answer C. It’s the head.

Average power for 54:57 was exactly 340 watts, mph 27.3, 181 average hr.