Lots of miles...

This week was full of miles on the bike.

Monday - Easy 1.5 hour spin on the trainer (raining)
Tuesday - 2 hours 20 minutes on the trainer (raining) with 5 minute intervals
Wednesday - 48.6 miles on the single speed with lots of climbing
Thursday - 46.1 miles on my road bike with lots of climbing
Friday - 52.1 miles on the road bike with the Friday Morning crew...a little harder than I wanted, but lots of fun
Saturday - 50.1 miles on the TT bike at Sauvies Island...TTT practice (more on this in a minute)
Sunday - 57.1 miles on the road bike with Jeff

This week I totaled 17 hours, 5 minutes and 8 seconds on the bike for a total of 321.11 miles and my legs are toast right now....A new PR for most hours on the bike and miles ridden in one week for me.

I really wanted a bit more legs under me on Saturday for the TTT practice, but couldn't pass up on a great Friday ride that for the most part was held in check, but we had some good fun on Dairy Creek Road, especially with the wind at our backs.

Saturday we had 3 of our 4 team members for the TTT championships out at Sauvies Island to get in some ride time, practice riding together and practice rotations. Overall it went very well. The rotations were pretty smooth, corners went well and we worked well as a team. The actual starting rotation will still have to be worked out and we still need a bit of work on getting the lead rider in the right position for escheloning into the wind, but so far so good. We also have yet to do any 90 degree turns which we will see 4 of at the championships, so not sure how that will go yet.

The weather on Saturday was good, but a bit windy. We did a nice easy warm up lap, then started the real work on the second lap. We waited until we passed the "Speed Bump" section before turning it up.

Our first effort covered 9.71 miles over 20:34 of time at an average speed of 28.4 mph. The first 2-3 miles were into a 7-8 mph headwind which averaged things out with the rest having a tail wind (though with the turns in the road it wasn't a true tailwind and 1/2 the time was more of a rear cross wind). My legs were very dead during our practice, but I gave what effort I could, which for the most part I was able to keep pace on my pulls with out too much problem...averaging 354 watts for the first 20:34 effort. Not bad with all of my pulls averaging over 400 watts.

The second effort we took it just a bit easier covering 9.52 miles in 21:10 at an average speed of 27 mph. Again the first 2-3 miles were into a head wind. My average wattage dropped to 316 watts during this effort and my lead efforts were down in power compared to the second lap. Overall, my legs still felt OK, but I could tell they were very tired from the day before and didn't have the endurance or "Pop" from the day before.

Hopefully the next two weeks we will be able to get all 4 team members out to practice and really put our team through it's paces. The extra member will help with rest during pulls and will add another strong member on the team and keep the pace higher.

Looking at our numbers and the effort from Saturday (I'd put the 1st effort at a 90% effort) when we have all 4 members together with rested legs, full aero gear and disc wheels I think we will have a very, very fast team.