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.