Mike's Bike Blog

Ahh the signs of spring in Austin, TX with it's high pollen and other allergen count. The days are starting to hit the 80 degree mark can only mean one thing, the start of the RunFar Time Trial bimonthly series. The RunFar TT is held every other Tuesday from April to September on an 8 mile course on the South end of MoPac.

I made it out a handful of times last year and my best time was the very last one with a time of 19:47 and averaging 24.3mph. My goal for 2010 is to average 25 mph on the course.

Sunday I played hockey, the first time in a couple months, because of my sporadic hockey schedule my legs never really have time to adapt. This leaves me sore afterwards, the funny thing is on Monday my legs usually feel fine, it's Tuesday when they start to stiffen up. To make matters worse I was bitten by something last week while riding and my leg has swollen up, I even did a little time in the ER it got so bad. It's still swollen and aches but they have me on antibiotics, still don't know what got me. Tuesday during lunch I went out for a little spin to see how the legs would handle the pedals and it wasn't as bad as I suspected. My plan was to go out there and get a couple 20 minute SST workouts in.

When I got to the veloway at 5pm the parking lot was almost full and there were cars already lining the street. Everybody was as excited as me for the first TT of the year! I hadn't seen so many people there this early before. I warmed up with Enrique (NWCC), Andrew (AC2) and his buddy. We did a couple laps around the veloway.

The entire time I felt really good, even the hill before Escarpment was good, with the wind at my back I was able to stay in the aero position up the hill. On the way back I still felt good despite a headwind where usually we have a nice tailwind. I lost focus a little and let my speed drop as I was averaging 26 mph. The official results have my time at 18:56:40 with an average speed of 25.3 mph.

After the race the BikeNoob asked me if the jump in my average speed was due to the new bike or legs. I of course replied that it was all legs, but in truth it might be a little of both. My power from last years fastest time and this one are fairly close, with this years average power about 10 watts less. The faster time with fewer watts can be attributed to bike as the TT bike is more aerodynamic plus I was wearing a skin suit, shoe covers and an aero helmet. Another contributing factor is I've lost a few pounds since last year and I've been playing with my nutrition as well. One other item to take into consideration is a slight change in the course. At the end of MoPac when you U-Turn onto the opposite direction it use to be a sharp turn onto the shoulder of oncoming traffic. They have reworked this section and there is now a dedicated U-Turn lane and the corner seemed a little easier to maintain speed. As I recall last year in my best effort I was slowed by other riders in this section which didn't occur this time.

Now that I've met my 2010 goal in the first race I need to up it, 27 mph sounds pretty good.

This year one of my goals is to ride up the 3 Sisters in under 3 minutes. Throughout the year I've been whittling away at that time. I started 2009 with my best time at 3'24 and set times at 3'16, 3'11 and finally I had gotten it down to 3'09.

My last few times when I set out to try and beat the 3 minute mark something would happen. On one attempt I got almost all the way up to top of the 1st sister and I came unclipped. Another time I went to shift from the big ring to the small ring 1/2 way up the 1st sister and it didn't shift thus I lost my momentum. Today, I got a good warm up riding out to the water treatment plant and back to the base of the sisters.

On all past rides my time up the 1st sister is 1'20, today I was surprised to see it at 1'06! I knew with a good split at this point the goal was well within my grasp. I was feeling good, I hadn't overcooked myself at this point, I averaged 516 watts and 12.6 mph on this section. For the second sister I tried to keep the effort consistent but also to pace myself a bit so I have enough in the tank for the final sprint. I averaged 420 watts and 7.8 mph. On the last sister I averaged 473 watts and 8.6 mph for the final 36 second sprint to the top. For the entire effort I averaged 424 watts and 10.5 mph.

Now that I've beat the 3 minute mark (2'53) next year's bar will be set at 2'30.

After a 1 week rain delay yesterday brought an end to the RunFar Time Trial. The conditions seemed perfect, low wind and NOT 104 degrees. The night before I readied my bike by replacing the front tire with a new tire and put on my 11x23 cassette. I was a little worried that I might have sabotaged my race with my lunch. It's not very often that my wife and my paths align during the day for us to meet for lunch, but yesterday such alignment did occur. I very rarely eat out but this would be one special occasion and what do you do on a special occasion, you eat Indian buffet of course. As we left the Indian Palace I was well under the "roll me out" limit so I felt somewhat good that I hadn't over done it. I kept telling myself that the extra calories would come in handy during the race, but knew deep down I was just kidding myself for we all know that carbo loading is somewhat a myth (the time carbohydrate consumption is valuable is 0-60 minutes after a workout i.e. recovery. That's when the glycogen synthase enzyme which controls glycogen storage is most active. Any excess food you eat leading up to the race is going to be passed through the bowels.)

When I got to the veloway I did 3 warm up laps and was quite pleased with the way my legs felt and didn't have any stomach issues so I was as ready as I'd ever be. I rolled up to the start and let it fly. On first 2 miles I thought I might have went out a little too hard so tried to stay around 300 watts for miles 2-4. It's hard to say if this helped, but on paper it looks like it hurt me in the long run. For this 2nd stretch was my slowest time split, my average speed dropped to 21.6 mph, but I did average 299 watts. The time split for this section was 5:32. Looking back at it I rode all the other sections soundly and if I had not had pulled up here I could have crushed my previous personal best time on the course. Actually there's something else that affected my time in this section that might have been more of a factor than my pacing. As I approached the turnaround point I caught 2 other riders and had to slow down to 9 mph well before I would have as I made the turn onto 1826. I caught the 2nd rider right at the turn forcing me to slow again and maneuver around a 3rd rider on the other turn back onto 45. This is what probably cost me the most time on this section.

In the end I beat my previous best time by almost 10 seconds with a time of 19:47 (previous best time was 19:56.6). This last TT I finally held the power that I knew I could hold for 20 minutes. All other times I would try for 300 watts but failed on all other attempts, which left me scratching my head as I've held 295-300 in other 20 minute efforts while doing FTP intervals.

I really like Time Trials and had a kick in the pants doing the RunFar TT's and I already can't wait till next spring when they resume. Next year I'll be shooting for an average speed of 25+ mph. It sure would be nice to have the full time trial set up, dedicated TT bike, aero helmet, skin suit and the booties. I also wish the RunFar results would distinguish TT set up riders versus those riders that do the time trial Eddy Merckx style (regular road bike, helmet and no fancy aero nothing). It would be nice to see how I stack up to the others doing the TT Merckx style.

Here's the breakdown of my efforts this season (Best time splits are in green):

As you may recall when I started racing the RunFar Time Trial that my goal for this year was to get a sub 20 minute time. My first time I did the TT I raced it in 20:35:55, the second time I came in at 20:11.90. Tonight was my third try and it was a charm. My official time was 19:56.6 and I averaged 24.1 mph.

There are a few factors for meeting this goal. The bikenoob was there with a video camera filming, so of course I had to rise to the occasion. Unfortunately I was too fast and Ray might have missed my personal record setting race as I didn't see him with his camera again till I was leaving in my car. So much for 15 minutes of fame in a psychology class project.

The other contributing factor was a Super Squadra sandwich. When I started there were 2 Super Squadra members in front of me. Anyway they turned and started down MoPac while I went up La Crosse to flip around and come back down and make my approach onto MoPac that way. On the first 2 mile stretch I passed a few riders and had the Super Squadra in my sights. Could this be, could I be actually closing the gap. On the hill 2 miles in they were starting to separate. Flabbergasted I caught and passed one, not sure if there was a problem with his bike or what ailment was allowing me to close and pass him.

At the turn around point I had closed the gap to the leading Super Squadra rider. I began to think something must be up. Could I really be kicking this much butt, had somebody slipped something into my tea? Maybe it was my Fat Cyclist jersey giving me super human powers? These thoughts ran through my head especially when I passed the 2nd Super Squadra rider. I couldn't maintain my 28 mph speed and dropped down a bit to 24 mph. It could have been the loss of speed and the realization that he had just been passed by a Cat 5er on a straight up road bike with no aero anything but he passed me back. But he dangled out in front of me just enough to keep pushing me. In the last 2 miles it finally dawned on me what was happening, no I had not entered an alternate universe where I was suddenly faster, but the Super Squadra riders were doing a warm up lap. I blocked all thoughts and focused on the finish, this warm up theory was proven when the AT&T rider I caught at the line didn't go over the electronic timing pad thus proving that the big dogs were out there warming up. In any event the Super Squadra sandwich helped push me to meet my goal, but I don't think it was the main contributing factor.

For the past month I have been working on raising my FTP by doing the plan laid out by Jesper at training4cyclist.com. I did his 4 week plan last July as well with great success. A month of hard work paid off raising my FTP up a few watts! Now to come up with a new time for a goal. There are 4 more time trials this year, I'll go with an outlandish goal, but I think I can do it. I want to take 10 seconds off my time each time and at the end be below 19 minutes.

Mile 0-2
Time: 5:07.44
Avg Watts: 289
Speed: 23.5

Mile 2-4
Time: 5:13
Avg Watts: 290
Speed: 23

Mile 4-6
Time: 4:34.68
Avg Watts: 265
Speed: 26.3

Mile 6-8
Time:  4:54
Avg Watts: 293
Speed: 24.5

Jeff's not the only one that got a Personal Record today. I got 2 on today's ride. For my lunch ride I left my house and went down Limecreek Road to Volente Beach for a 20 mile out and back. Today's goal was form sprints, 6-8 x 8-12 second sprints at 516 watts and NOT to do them all out.

When I got to the turnaround point in Volente I was close to my fastest time, this was good news since I was into the wind on the way out. I knew I wouldn't be able to do the 20 miles in 1 hour which is my overall goal, but I thought it would be close. I continued back doing my sprints, but not really concentrating on speed, but just riding.

As I approached the 3 Sisters I had a decision to make, I could either try to go for a record time up it but then not have enough in the tank to finish the overall ride strong. (After going all out on the 3 Sisters it takes a minute or two to recover). Or I could go up it at a steady pace, albeit slower but at the top be able to get back up to speed. Looking at the time as I hit the Sisters I decided to give a go at a fast time up it. I calculated that I would be 2 minutes off my 60 min goal.

At the base I was in my large ring, I usually spin 1/3 of the way up or around the Fisher Hollow road and then I shift down to the smaller ring and continue up. This time I wanted to try a different strategy. This time I didn't shift to the small ring at all till I hit the 2nd sister. When it was all said and done I finished the climb in 3'11",  5 seconds faster than my previous best.

Surprisingly I was able to get back up to speed relatively fast. Like I suspected I finished in 1:02. A bit faster than my previous best time for the Volente Down and Back. So I got 2 PRs for the price of one today. I like that math! Plus I didn't have to endure any pesticides.

Ride Statistics and Power Data