For various reasons I’ve barely ridden since conquering the Pyrenees in July. Today I finally dusted off the cobwebs (literally!) on the S-Works and rode Westerley CC’s 10mi TT on the HCC180 course which starts in Great Missenden and is a simple out and back involving a couple of roundabouts.

It was supposed to be a 2-up event (2 riders working together to set one time) but I asked Roger if I could ride it solo since I’d never done a proper “10” before. A couple of years ago I’d done some of the Westerley’s evening 10s that were held over 11 laps of the Hillingdon circuit and actually 10.25mi. I think I was doing 26s for those.

Conditions weren’t the best today (it felt pretty breezy in both directions) but I’ve ridden that road when they’ve been a lot worse too.

Technically (and I’m certainly no TT expert here, just my musings) my ride wasn’t too hot. I was all over the shop with power output. Starting too hard is one thing but all through the 10mi I seemed to be up to 400W and then down to 300W and after one effort to pass another rider I dropped to 250W!

Towards the end Jumbo (edit: not Ron Purdy, see, that’s how long I’ve been away :)) was cheering me on (and probably stopped me riding up a slip lane when another cyclist turned that way in front of me) and I was lucky to sight a pair of riders up ahead which forced up my pace towards the finish. It hurt but it felt good at the same time. I stopped my watch thinking I’d gone low 25min in actual fact I’d done a long 24.. 24:55 to be precise. So that’s my 10mi PB and something to aim for when I have a built TT bike and do some actual training rather than competitive drinking next year.

We had breakfast afterwards at the Deep Mill Diner and I then had a frantic ride over to the Westerley hill climb I’d entered to set a completely unstartling time of 3-minutes-something. At 95kg I’m never going to be competitive but in this case I was just too trashed after the 10 to climb. It wasn’t even particularly steep or anything I just had totally dead legs and after the flattish start totally faded, ran out of air, hit the bail out gears and rolled to the top.

I guess I was just too fast for them to get any photos of me..

WitzEnd > Westerley 2up 10 11th Oct 2009

HCC180 10mi TT 24:55 PB:

Duration: 24:55

Work: 518 kJ

TSS: 45.2 (intensity factor 1.043)

Norm Power: 349

VI: 1.01

Pw:HR: n/a

Pa:HR: n/a

Distance: 16.265 km

Min Max Avg

Power: 0 1022 346 watts

Cadence: 36 118 89 rpm

Speed: 5.5 49.5 39.1 kph

Pace 1:13 10:55 1:32 min/km

Hub Torque: 0 59.3 10.8 N-m

Crank Torque: 0 152.7 37.2 N-m