Preparation increased for this 10 miler – I rode the Ribble to work so it didn’t feel totally foreign to me like last time.

Getting to the circuit was fine and with someone else’s helped I numbered up – 17 this time, starting sooner.

It wasn’t until I made my way onto the track that I noticed the hideous wind, hitting me straight in the face going up the longer hill to the start line. My HR was over 160bpm just crawling up to the line! In my typical defeatist fashion I dismissed all hopes of beating my last time of 28:18 and actually regretted paying ?3.50 just to set a slower time.

Chatting to Ed before the start, he’d brought out Louis(?) who’d done a 24(?) in his first 10 last weekend. What’s with all these fast TT’ers? Maybe training on the bike rather than in a pub is the difference?

I left the start line quickly and actually managed to slow myself down this time, vowing not to blow up in two laps. After the downhill sweeper, the wind was painful again up the short sharp hill but then it was big gear time all the way down the back straight. In the later laps I was holding the same high gear all through this until rounding the corner on “awcrap!” hill and gearing right down to spin up it.

I wanted 2:15 per lap and the first was 2:45. Damn. But, after 4 laps I was under 5min, ie. beating 2:30 per lap which was still faster than my last attempt. I kept ahead of my last 10mi time for the whole ride, even with the harsher conditions. On the final lap I didn’t gear down and pushed through until the finish line to set a new best of 27:20. Almost a minute quicker than my last ride and in harder conditions – a 26 should be easily obtainable with no wind. I must have been well out of redline this ride as I not only managed to calculate lap times and the fact I was up, I even managed to ride the correct number of laps!!! Carl would be proud..

Update:

Using the Polar software to compare these the two TTs, it’s apparent that my HR doesn’t alter more than a few bpm between the races, even though the second week is a minute faster and the wind stronger. At some points my HR is actually dead even. Is this training benefit derived from the previous TT? Less nerves in the second race? Something else?

Distance: 10.23mi

Avg. Speed: 35.8kph

HRmax: 192bpm

HRavg: 178bpm