Originally Posted by
Hermes
IMO, asking if a time is good or not may not yield the right answer. Since my wife races the 4K at the track a lot (she uses it for time trial training), I asked her and she said it was slow for a young male. But she does a 5:45 after three other track races in the same day. So let’s throw out her data point. Also, she is used to watching men at races knock out 4:20.
I race the 500 meter and 2k pursuit and not the 4K and I have a different perspective. You were not on the track fixed gear and you did not have to start and finish in the same gear but to be fair there is no perfectly flat road course with only left hand turns. On a 250 meter track professional track, the bike is turning 40% of the time versus on the road one is riding generally in a straight line. On the track there is opportunity to scrub speed and add distance in every turn hence 40% of the time.
So riding the pursuit on a track on a pursuit bike has a high execution factor to increase speed and it is very easy to squander power and takes years to achieve the perfect race.
Having said that, your effort was great. It did not burn the house down but you did it and I would encourage you to go to the track and try different events. If you like the idea of going after perfect execution and since you like time trials and timed events, the track is a great venue and a lot of fun. Riding timed events alone on the track is about as safe a cycling gets. A large part of sport is wanting and trying to do it. Ultimately, your optimized pursuit time will be how you visualize yourself, your training and execution and of course genetics. Good luck.
Yeah, it's not that quick. It was a workout, so I had to mind doing it 4x in an hour at lunch back to back.
I did a stand start and stayed in the same gear. 54/15 uphill into wind and 54/14 downhill with wind. The guess into the wind uphill was WRONG. At the end there's a little false flat at like 2.5% grade into the wind for about 30 seconds of the run. Yeah, I was at like 75 rpm for that. Which for me is really slow.
Pursuit for the next few days will be off the table as fun diversion. I'm making a last go at 10mi for 2020. I broke an hour for the 25mi. So that's off the table. Weather Monday/Tuesday looks good.
Choosing my route now. The 25mi route was great as the 3 laps were fair so that you didn't start or end on a downhill or downwind tossing the effort. Each lap was like 8.xx mi. So 3x was right on 25mi. But, 8.xx is short of 10mi. So, into Google maps I go. The 25mi I did 252w, was scared of the pacing. In recent workouts it appears I should be able to hold 300 for a 10mi try.
Fitness is there from all my sweetspot TT bike work. Just gotta embrace the pain knowing the ramp on HR will work out just right for that 22-23min range of time. Did 12min in 290's yesterday for a KOM just to see.