My leg felt fairly good in the morning and during warm up so I thought I had a chance at putting in a good time. Having never ridden this course I knew it was flat, 15 miles and a pretty simple course. There appeared to be a bit of a tailwind on the way out and a headwind on the way back in...which is opposite of what most every body prefers.
Since my dismal performance in the road race I was the 2nd off the line in the TT. The P/1/2 riders took off first, so the reality was I only had one person in front of me and after that nobody to chase so I knew I was in for a tougher TT than I wanted.
Off the line I felt good and by 1.5 - 1.75 miles into the TT I had caught my 30 second man...from there forward it was solo. The way out went really well as I was consistently keeping my speeds in the 28mph - 29mph range and my HR was mid 150's which is where I usually try and keep it.
Then I made the turn into the crosswind for about a mile and my speeds dropped, as did my HR.
When I turned for the final stretch back to the finish I had a hard time keeping my HR up. Most of the way back it was in the mid 140's...which is a good 10-15 beats lower than I like to keep it at this point in a TT.
I don't know if the lower HR was due to no carrots to chase or the effort I put in the day before trying to catch the peloton...but I was struggling a little at this point. I tried to get my HR up a little by spinning an easier gear faster, but that didn't seem to help and my speeds were a little slower, so I went back to a larger gear and tried to mash my way home.
It wasn't until the last mile that I was able to get my HR back up when I was pushing as hard as I could to the finish line and even then it was right at 152bpm, which is well below what it should be.
In the end I put in a time of 34:24 which was good enough for 15th overall...but about 1.5 minutes slower than I'm capable of doing on this course. This did move me up a place or two overall...but I was still sitting near the bottom of the GC.
No comments:
Post a Comment