Mike's Bike Blog

I drove a different route to the RunFar Time Trial course this time, instead of going down MoPac from 183 I drove to 360 and took that to catch MoPac. It was so much more enjoyable, yes there were stop lights on 360, but there was no stop and go traffic. Plus I got to the veloway in record time. As it turns out too fast, normally I do 2 warm up laps around the veloway and when I get done the RunFar truck is there and ready for sign ups. This time I still had 30 minutes till they get there, so I did another warm up lap. With even more time I sat around till they finally showed up and got set up.

Since my goal for the race was a good 20 minute interval I had to either start my time early or keep going after the finish in case I finished the race in less than 20 minutes. This turned out to be wishful thinking. I started out on LaCrosse by the school slowly getting my power up, about a minute out from the start. Thus when I hit the start I was near my power level I wanted to maintain for the 20 minutes.

Around mile 2 I knew I was in for a long ride, my legs felt heavy and I felt like I was struggling. My speed was not where it needed to be either. At the turn around point I got my second wind and started to feel good. It could have been the motivation of catching up to others out of the course who were probably doing their warm ups but I'll use them for motivation anyway. Warm up or not I passed about 3 or 4 guys. One took exception and passed me back but wasn't able to hold his speed or want too so I passed him again. It was a hard 20 minutes. It wasn't my fastest time on the course and 7 watts off on the average watts between the 2.

Looking over the numbers from last night compared to my fastest time I definitely had a harder time with the 1st half of the course. Not sure if it was due to wind or what, I know my legs didn't feel all that great. I'll have to look at my training log to see what my fitness & fatigue levels were at going into the race compared to last nights. An oversight on my part for last nights race I forgot to take any Endurolites. I normally will take 2 capsules when I leave the office to the veloway and then I take 2 to 3 more after my warmup. I forgot them this time. Checking out the results I came in 10th in my age group.