This weekend was the whole road season. Crit on Saturday, age-graded TT on Sunday.
I won't spend too long on the crit: thunderstorms loomed heavy in the forecast and opened up halfway through the race. When 2 dudes crashed in front of me in the rain with 6 to go, I pulled the plug. Glad I did, as the rain got heavier and the sprint was apparently blind. Full respect to the Carytown crew for sticking it out and bringing Will Hart a shiny new medal.
Bailing early meant I wouldn't be going into Sunday tired. Woot! First time for that. And the forecast for Sunday was glorious: cloudy, no wind, temps in the low 70's. Basically identical conditions to 2019, which becomes important! The course was still very wet from Saturday's deluge, and the humidity was off the charts.
I'd wanted to get there with an hour to set up & get ready, but ended up having only 40 minutes, which still sounds like a lot until you handle registration, pin on numbers, kit up with all the fancy ridiculous TT accessories, find the disc wheel inflator adaptor, and then try to figure out how to pee in the speed suit (it zips up the back).
So I got almost no real warmup--maybe 15 minutes, tops--and was still choking down my pre-race snack literally 3 seconds before I was released.
I'd spent a lot of time and effort getting the bike ready over the summer, slamming the stem, tweaking the skis, converting to 1x with a massive 56T chainring, and rebuilding that damned rear brake like a million + 1 times. A few rides on it confirmed I was moving in the right direction, as I finally made the ride to work in less than an hour of elapsed time without even wearing the speedsuit.
Unfortunately one change, though, was a mixed blessing. The road bike puked its big ring a month ago, so I moved the power meter crankset from the TT bike to the road bike (since I use it ~12:1 more than the TT bike). That allowed me to remount the Rotor aero crankset, which mated beautifully with the aero mega-ring, but it meant no power numbers. But that's kinda ok, too, because my 45-year-old eyes struggle to read all the numbers on the Garmin these days. So I knew I'd be racing to heart-rate and pain thresholds, which isn't ideal but hey: I'm old and can't see.
With identitcal weather conditions to 2019, my goal was to exceed my performance, which seemed like it should be within reach given the bike improvements. That year I'd done the event at an average speed of 25.8 mph, an average heart rate of 175 bpm, and an average power of 259W. Obviously power wouldn't be tracked, but I really wanted a nice even 26 mph flat.
I made the start block with 30 seconds to spare, choked down the last bites of my caffeine bar, and rolled out...to realize I'd forgotten to stop my warmup ride. I'd have no ability to track my average speed.
But I was much more cautious about over-exerting in the first quarter than in 2019, getting quickly to threshold and just keeping my 1-minute man in sight ahead. As mentioned, the course was still wet, but not consistently: the inside line was mostly dry, and I found that my speeds went up when my tires weren't shedding water. I moved back and forth across the road for dry spots, and pretty quickly my 1-minute man was right in front of me, and before the turn I'd caught him, my 2-minute man, a straggler from a previous group, and was closing in on my 3-minute man.
The turn itself was a cluster: I was right on top of the straggler without enough time to complete the pass and had to let up. He heard me and gave me the inside line, but I'd already been off-throttle for way too long and ended up losing about 8 seconds total.
3rd quarter of the race was just pacing. Pick a gear and hold it: the course is pancake flat so get a rhythm and go. Hunt for dry pavement and resist the urge to look back. Vulture the neck and ignore the growing pain from the saddle.
4th quarter is supposed to be more aggressive, but it's not an easy delivery after 30 minutes in HR zone 5. I ended up holding steady pace & power until the last half mile and barely had any kick to add even then.
I crossed the line at 48:26, hit my 26.0 mph mark exactly, and averaged 176 bpm, a single beat higher than in 2019 (after a season of not racing consistenly, I'll take that!). The time was 24 seconds better than 2019 for the same effort (+/-0.6%) in the same conditions, good enough for 3rd place in Men 45+.
Crucially that 24-second improvement was the difference between 3rd and a tie for 4th, and the guy who finished in 2nd also came in 2nd in 2018, beating me that year by almost a minute and this year by only 15 seconds.
So the setup is getting closer, but I still know there are significant improvements left. I haven't switched to latex tubes or dedicated TT tires, the combination of which could make up that 15 second deficit alone. My skis are the older flat style, so I'm not in the modern "mantis" position, but they put my aero drink system almost completely out of the wind. Moving up the cost ladder, I could keep my eyes open for a 80 - 90mm front wheel. The 404 is a great aero/handling compromise, but this is a race of inches, not miles. And I think a more comfortable saddle would definitely help me keep my head in the game for longer, and a bespoke speedsuit with a windowed pocket for the number would be about as much as I could do with equipment before I visit a fitter (don't come at me) or rent one of those fancy pitot tubes for measuring CdA in the real world.
I definitely need to adjust my Zwift setup to see the screen while on the skis so I can train to power indoors over the winter months, too.
The guy in 1st beat me soundly by 2.5 minutes, so he's basically doing a different sport entirely, but the margin to 2nd is something I believe I can eliminate. Now I just have to wait another year to find out if I'm right.
