Wylde06

Someone has to start the thread..

8.8 mile time trial yesterday on the towpath along the river. This was the warmest one yet at 37 degrees and no snow on the ground. Years past has been fresh snow and temps 0-20 degrees..

It hurt about as much as I expected considering I havent really been riding much lately. Strava gives me a time of 34:46, didnt bother to check my official time but I do know that I wasnt last place.

Definitely need to get back in a training groove..

Heathpack 

Nice turnout today for the women at the Piru 20K ITT. In this pic you can see some serious racing chops: a current hour record holder, an ironwoman, state crit champ and at least 3 state TT champs. Sweet, so awesome to race with these women.

We had slow conditions today- light winds but it was cold (in the 40s) and had rained over night, we had wet pavement and some debris washed on the road. Nothing terrible. I had a strong day. Power dropout for the first 30 sec so I don't know my exact power but it was a little over target and I felt on top of my game. Paced it well, kept it pretty smooth with a VI of 1.0. Only real glitch was sitting up twice when I probably didn't have to- high speed downhill curves on wet pavement and I sat up to cover my brakes. Never braked though so I might as well have stayed in the aerobars. I was out of 2nd place by 21 seconds and being too conservative in those two curves was at least 21 seconds. Better than crashing I guess.

Somehow I wound up 4 min faster than the hour record holder. Maybe its the age difference (she's 15 years older than me) or maybe its just that she's not raced road TTs and she will very quickly figure that out and crush me next month.

Thanks to @Cleave for our held starts today.

Next up, in two weeks: Fiesta Island 20K TT.

Cleave

And I didn't drop a single racer.

Hermes

Heathpack 

Fiesta Island TT this morning. We had four days of rain this week but its been dry for 2 days, so I was surprised to see a wet/sandy/muddy road surface on the island today. Cool (50F) with light winds, maybe 4-5 mph from the ESE. I.e. slow conditions.


I was the last of 3 starts. Passed my 30 second woman halfway through the first lap, passed my 60 sec woman on the finishing stretch.


Rode it reasonably well. This is 3 laps of a completely flat circuit. When you look at it lap by lap, my splits were pretty even which is ok for this course and day (temp only warmed by 2 degrees during the race). But the front side of each lap was a tailwind segment, and the back side was a head wind. My intent was to ride the headwind sections of each lap at slightly higher power than the tailwind sections and I executed that well: lap 1 and 2 headwind power 1.5% greater than tailwind power, lap 3 headwind power was 3% greater than tailwind power. Seems about right, it wasn't much wind. We'll see what @Racer Ex thinks of it, maybe I should have shot for a bigger delta between head and tailwind sections of the course.


Otherwise raced conservatively. I knew the competition today and suspected the other women I was racing against would be more conservative than me. Same power as my Oct race on this course, 40 sec slower. I'm in better shape now, and my HR was around 4 bpm below what I can peg in a 20K TT. So definitely a sub-ferocious effort but it got the job done. Happy with it.

TMonk

nice ride @Heathpack

Hermes

@Heathpack Great result on a not so great course.

I thought the conditions would be suspect due to the rain and four wheel drive vehicles driving off the road in the mud and then back on the road. Yesterday, the road is still in poor shape. although dry, with sections of the road near the finish area covered in caked dry dirt. Much of the road is narrow due to dirt and sand on the edge with deep ruts on the side due to vehicle tires. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get ride of the caked dirt on the road. I did want to go very fast in the aerobars on caked dirt.

Radish_legs

Last night I raced the Midweek Criterium Race (B). I had only ridden my bike for about 30 minutes in the past 7 days, so I was definitely low on my TSS. A race would be an interesting way to get back on the bike. It was a 14 lap crit, 26 miles. 46 starters. My goal was to just stay in the group and go for the final sprint. Hopefully there would be no breakaways. The course had a couple of very short 4% climbs, and I would typically fall back a little bit on those. But catch back on with the downhill. First 12 minutes or so was averaging 300 watts. No breakaways got away. On the final lap, I concentrated on not falling back on the short climbs. Put out more power. By now, we only had about 20 riders in the lead group. I planned to punch it about what was 30 seconds from the finish line at our average lap speed. However one person took an early flyer. I was late to respond. But I chased. But I was not in his slipstream at all. No man's land. Well before my planned sprint point. But I kept going. Soon he ran out of gas and I passed him. Continued as hard as I could, held off the pack. Finished first. Zwift races are fun. And a good workout.

Heathpack 

@TMonk. thanks. I really can't mention this enough: SDBC does a great job with these Fiesta Island TTs. The race director is awesome, as is the announcer and all the volunteers. For me, this race is a 3am wake up call and 5 hours of driving RT. I come because it is so well done. You have such a great club.
@Hermes, yeah the road was trashed. Imagine that road surface wet, and having to pass people and take whatever line you needed to in order to pass and finishing on the slick mud surface. It was so much fun. I'm surprised my time was ok, actually. Only broke aero three times, to deal with a combo of road surface and traffic.
@Radish_legs, congrats on your win.

mattm

Congrats!

Was this in real racing or Zwift?

Radish_legs

This was zwift. So the report while true was somewhat tongue in cheek. But then when I think about it, I wonder, which is more prestigious. Winning an international e-crit at the B level against 44+ racers, or winning my local weekday "real" B crit with 30 racers?

TMonk

real

mattm

Win both, then you get to decide.

rubiksoval

+1

Bike racing vs a computer game... Ahhhhh.

While fitness is fitness, winning a bike race generally requires a significant amount of skill/tactics along with fitness. And the fitness needed to race on Zwift is quite dissimilar to an actual race, in my experience.

furiousferret

IMO, when you win anything its a big deal, they don't come around very often and its important to take it in.

Because of the digital nature and honor system of Zwift there are anomalies but beating 30 people at anything a huge accomplishment.

mattm

Raced IRL on Saturday with @Ygduf, the Cal Aggie pro/1/2/3 crit in Sacramento.

Always a fun race because it's the first one of the Norcal season, everyone seems to come out because they forgot how hard real racing is and haven't been jaded by losing yet.

60 riders in the field, 5 teammates. Our plan was to be in all the breaks, and go for the sprint if it came down to that. We executed well, got in all the breaks, but none of them stuck.

With ~20 mins to go in the 70 minute race it was clear that a field sprint was gonna happen, so we settled in to get ready for it. The "leadout" was just me, since everyone else was too tired from getting in said breaks.

After some bumping & corner-diving (that will be documented on YouTube soon) I was able to get in a good spot, jump and lead our sprinter through the last turn with ~300m to go. The winner jumped early and came flying by us, our sprinter chased and almost caught him at the line but not quite, lost by 1/2 a wheel. We just need one more leadout guy..

But overall it was a great start to the season!

furiousferret

I think you need to be the sprinter!

topflightpro

Matt, I thought you were the sprinter?

But great job, regardless.

mattm

It's been known to happen - but he's a more pure sprinter, and has a chance in a drag race against the local hotshots - I don't. I have to jump some else's leadout early to surprise those pure sprinters, but our team plan was to lead out our guy so that's what I did. Fwiw I came up with this plan.

He gave me a leadout last year (after I lapped the field in a break and he didn't) and I got 2nd.. which was mostly my fault for working too hard in the break.

cmh

Nice job Matt!

Tangent: Can we all assume a race is IRL unless stated otherwise.

topflightpro

Maybe non-real races should be in their own thread?

hack

Ygduf

or forum.

Ygduf

at least you weren't publicly shamed on youtube for sucking at those corners!

mattm

this