West London Combine 2010 Event #4 25 mile TT was held today on the HCC114 course. This is the north-south-north-south course I quite dislike.

Another 5am wake up and the wind was strong WNW from the get go. After doing some laps around Great Missenden to stop myself cooling down I lined up 5th to start.

The timing guy called “5” and I rolled up and got held (as you do) and then I waited.. and waited and then timing guy calls “rider 6” which took me a bit by surprise.

“I’m rider 5!”

“You should’ve gone already”

“Ah sh1t!” and I launch down the road shaking my head at what happened.

The first north leg wasn’t too bad since I was fresh. The turn-around gave me a tailwind and I pushed the pace, actually running out of gears in doing so! I tried winding down the pace a little but this seemed counter-intuitive.. that was until the turn around.. oof! Into the headwind now and after leaving a lot of energy on the road this was horrid. Power was all over the place, speed was low and to cap it off my wrists and arms were taking a battering – I really need to do more (some) riding on this TT bike. At points I was getting out of the saddle and onto the bullhorns just to relieve the stress on my wrists. The rough roads don’t help here. Turning around again and it was the last stretch with a tailwind. The pace was lifted and a lovely horse float came past which helped boost my speed. Unfortunately they slowed down and then stopped encountering other riders so I was on the brakes and since there was oncoming traffic had no way around! Doh! Finish. 1:02:11

Power was down on last year’s ride but so was time, thanks to the cheat bike I guess. Still, I beat Simon (sorry mate :)) and compared favourably to Malcolm Woolsey who usually does sub-1hr and this time did a 1:01:xx. Peter Dixon destroyed the course with a 58:02 taking a minute of his PB.

HCC114 25mi TT:

Duration: 1:02:11 (1:02:17)

Work: 1121 kJ

TSS: 104 (intensity factor 1.005)

Nor Pwr: 307

VI: 1.02

Distance: 40.924 km

Min Max Avg

Power: 0 971 300 watts

Cadence: 35 114 91 rpm

Speed: 4.1 57.1 39.4 kph

Pace 1:03 14:38 1:31 min/km

Lance’s Willesden CC summary can be found here.

Last year’s 1:03:42 on a road bike.

Neil drove myself and some bikes to Paul and Paula’s home in Feletto Umberto near Udine in northern Italy. The rest of the bunch arrived by plane and we proceeded to get on each others nerves, I mean, shared some lovely and challenging cycling together, for a week. We scaled the “hardest climb in the UCI Pro Tour” Monte Zoncolan as well as riding into Slovenia, riding to the coastal towns of Grado and Duino and watching some of the Giro (Cycling Tour of Italy) fly through Spilimbergo.

The weather was fantastic. The hosts fantastic. The terrain was fantastic. The company fantastic. It was a great trip and I HIGHLY recommend getting yourself to the area if you like cycling, or wine, or coffee or food or lovely scenery or.. you get the idea. Also of note was the city of Strasbourg where Neil and I stayed on the way back. ‘Shambles’-like buildings plus some impressive cathedrals and very ‘old town’ feel as well as some Belgian beer bars = full of win!

Photos from Italy (some are mine, some are not)

Well, since I was going for my first sub-hour time, I wasn’t too happy with 1:00.04 but thinking about it..

I’d been drinking a lovely combo of beer, cider and bourbon at Shaun’s 40th barbecue since 11am yesterday.

I got to bed at 1.30am after scoffing a 12″ meatball (more meat?!) Subway to ease the inevitable hangover.

I woke up to the alarm at 4.30am and had only instant coffee to drink, having run out of beans the day before.

I rode (a bit shakey and holding back the vom) to the start 40k away and actually felt ok when I got there, though obviously didn’t look it, judging by some of the comments!

I’m a bit annoyed that if I didn’t miss the last turn (I only just made it, braking hard, thinking I was going straight on) and almost stop at 2 RABs for cars I’d have made sub-hour. 4 seconds!

Having said that, it was a new PB for the 25, taking 1m29s off my previous best time – set on the same course on the S-Works road bike 2 years ago.

Simon took FOUR frickin’ minutes out of my time with a 56:11 so he must’ve been on fire today – I need to ask him for his training plan or EPO dealer 😉

I’m not sure what time Lance got, I was too busy consuming cake and coffee and hobbling back to a chair to notice – I’ve strained my glutes again – the ride home was horribly slow.

Scherrit came over later and asked me about pacing and power. I was just loading the data into WKO so we had a chat about it:

My power data indicates that I’m producing very similar power on the TT bike as I did on my road bike, even with far less training at the same time of year. This is very good.

It means that my TT position isn’t robbing me of any power and my return to cycling after such a ‘non-event winter’ might be doing good things for me.

My Average Power and Normalised Power values are also fairly close. I think this indicates reasonable pacing, ie. if there was a big difference it’d mean I was spiking the power output at times.

It was the first 25 this year with the correct power meter fitted and it shows I am putting out over 310W for the hour. I wasn’t able to hit this on the turbo so assumed my power was well down. It’s not. I should be happy. 4 seconds. *sigh*

The West London Cycling Association 25 mile TT today (2010-05-02) was reduced to a 10 mile TT due to the horrible weather. Even so, only about 10 people rode from an start list of 27.

5am start to the day, no coffee and riding out into the pissing rain was pretty rubbish and if it hadn’t been for Simon picking me up with a couple of miles to the HQ I’d probably have missed my start time too! I was on the Kinesis (new winter bike) since I didn’t want to ride the TT machine in the rubbish weather. Started and thought I was riding pretty well considering the conditions but the power meter didn’t agree. I guess yesterday took more out of my legs than I thought. Messed up the RAB when I was wiping my face and hit a pothole – whoops. 26:41 or two minutes slower than last year (road bike, in the dry) and about 6th place. Simon had a great day and did a 25:00 on a road bike with clip-ons. He came in 3rd overall. His training is paying off. Well done! Thanks loads for the lift home!

Big thanks to the Hillingdon CC, South Bucks RC and Amersham RCC volunteers who were standing out there in the cold and rain and didn’t even get a ride! Champions!

UPDATE: Andrew Cowburn has already got the results out. 11 riders finished. Fastest was Malcolm Woolsey with 23.47. I was 7th and looking at my Powertap data exactly 50W down on average power compared to October last year. 3kph slower. Bah!

Simon’s Great Missenden Wet One Race Report

So I missed the bunch due to faffing around with seatclamps and loose bottle cages. Rode part of the loop they do which was actually quite nice – around Burnham Beeches – very posh houses in amongst nice woods. The sun was out, contrary to weather forecasts which helped things. I was short on distance after doing some random “try not to get too lost” looping around so I went to Richmond Park for a single lap. I haven’t been there for ages. “You made that hill look effortless. Were you even breathing?” was one bloke’s comment after riding up the steeper hill going CW. Ha! Maybe actually riding my bike is helping my fitness.. who would’ve thunk it?! I’m not looking forward to the very early start 25mi TT tomorrow.