24:24

Last night I looked at the TT bike and thought “nah, it’ll be slower on the hill climb” so chose to prep the S-Works road bike instead.

I looked at the 11T DA cassette and thought “nah, I’ll not go fast enough for that” and kept the 12T cassette on. Turns out I could’ve done with both. Damn!

My normalised power was 20W up on the 10mi TT I did on 18/09/2011. The tailwind on the way out meant that at my preferred cadence I ran out of gears on the Wendover bypass. I was averaging ~47kph/30mph at the turn-around. The average after the turn-around dropped to a meagre 36kph – the wind made a difference!

I probably should’ve made use of the holder at the start and perhaps not got involved in the err ‘Willesden 3-up’ 🙂

Using the road bike meant I paid less attention to the power meter, so perhaps rode more to my body’s limit than a pre-determined best guess? Anyway, a good lesson in preparation that I will ignore like the other hundred lessons in preparation I’ve ignored in the past. The ‘green army’ headed to Deep Mill Diner where those who had planned to do the hill climb had a coffee and those that were perhaps talked into doing the hill climb had breakfast.. 😉

The hill climb over Longdown (Cadsdean Road) was a fairly standard affair for me with the only things worth noting: sort gears out before starting! Crunch Bang Crack Pop Click Snap Etc. and if you want to perform well.. don’t do a 10mi TT beforehand!

I came in 2nd place with a 2:44 I think, way off Dom’s first place 2:15. Apparently I was only a second slower than him last year with a 2:47 which means he has basically got a lot faster going up hills. But it also means I am marginally faster up hills which is nice. Maybe doing thousands of kilometres during the season works for me? *bins turbo trainer* Yeeess!!!