king-tony

Short version: As Ricky Bobby's daddy would say - I was the 9th loser


Long version that only my mom would care about:

I was racing the 4/5 +35 time trial just east of Chattanooga. The course was a 5.5 mile rolling loop with two 90 degree turns. The first 3/4 mile was a steady uphill section which then turned into a fast descent for the next mile before making the first turn which put us into the 5-10mph headwind. The next two miles were rolling before making the final right hand turn and hitting a short, but steep climb before the long descent and flat into the finish.

Let me start by saying I love time trialing, but really hate short courses. They just don't work for me as I have no experience pacing for these things. Most of my TT specific training is in 20-40 range at or just below TH. This was my first race in about 6 weeks and I have been feeling pretty well lately and had one simple goal: to finish with an average wattage between 340 and 345.

I arrived at this number a couple of weeks ago. Since I had no idea how to pace I decided to use my existing power data and looked at my mean maximal power curve. I did some math and thought that this TT would be in the 13-14 minute range. I picked what I thought was my 12 minute power 338 watts and set that as a target. I then did a 13 minute effort on my Cycleops 300PT and averaged 341. About 4 days later I did an outdoor 5.5 mile effort on a flatter course and had an average of 344 with a little over 13 minutes of total time.

I ran pretty much my only options which are my Fuji Aloha, Zipp 404 front and my PT wheel which is now built into a Velocity rim. I also ran my Wheelsmith Disc covers, but discovered that they do not fit quite as well as they did on the open pros. I thought that it would still be better than running an open wheel so I fit the disc reasonably well with a few modifications. My skin suit has still not arrived so I wore a tight longsleeve, bibshorts, shoe covers, Giro Advantage 2 helmet and no gloves. I had a standard water bottle on my down tube.

I got to the course about an hour early and had plenty of time to get ready. I think that the more that I do this the more I will find a routine. I sort of looked at my watch and was ready to go 30 minutes early. I decided to ride the course backwards which is something I like about a loop course. I'm glad I did this as I saw how fast the last mile would be and wanted to make sure that I had something left at the end.

I got to the start house a few minutes early and watched as the starter yelled out names and tried to herd the cattle. I was placed in line and told that there would be a ghost rider in front of me. As I was second from the start 2 guys were inserted in front of me....ok. I waited until the person in front of me went and the director looked at the starter and said "you let him go 2 seconds early". That helped my confidence. I rolled up to the start and pretty much looked like a ****z as the bike was leaning and I was struggling to balance and hit the interval button on my PT. The starter counted me down 5-4....oh crap my pedals are not positioned right (left at 9 o'clock for me)...2-1, I'm off.

I struggled trying to decide what I was going to do when I was thinking about the course the night before. I new that if I went too hard I could easily blow up, but with 30 second start times I also did not want to be demoralized by getting passed early. I decided I would try and hold 425 watts for the climb and I was pretty close at 416 and 23.9 mph. Here is where I just struggle and that is holding power on the down hills and in tail winds. I could only hold 293 watts on the first downhill section, back to 353 on the next uphill and back down to 301 on the next downhill. I basically repeated this through the ride.

I felt pretty good through the middle rollers. I really tried to think "small". By this I mean pull my shoulders in and try to keep my head up enough so that my helmet would actually be an aid rather than a wind catching fin. I was starting to pull in my 30 second man. By the base of the steep climb I was around 10 seconds back. By the top I was dying and he was within 5 seconds. I was dead and in the red as I started down the last hill and I was all over the bike trying to keep it going and keep my power up. I realized I had gone too hard and had nothing left for the fastest part of the course. I would guess that my 30 second man got 8-10 seconds back in the last 1.1 miles. I managed 339 watts for this section, but I was all over the bike and not aero at all.

I finished the course with a time of 13:23:88 on my PT and an official time of 13:27:017 and 10th place out of 41 finishers. With a perfect ride I might have had 10-15 seconds more and maybe a top 5 in me, but for the first race of my career I feel like I had nothing left. My hat's off to the guy that won and put 53 seconds into me in a 13 minute race. That is simply awesome and I could not even imagine what O'Donnell would do to a course like that.

I averaged 351 watts (only 4.01 w/kg) for the effort and 357 normalized. Overall I was very happy with my performance, but I have a ton of work to do to get to where I want to be. I don't know if it is reasonable for me to lose more than 5 or so additional pounds this season. I'm down to 193 from 235 at 6'4 and no more than 10% BF. I'm still slowly dropping weight, but also need to stay fueled for the increased intensity of racing. I'll be working a lot on positioning and also spending a lot of time on pacing for these shorter events which seem to be filling this year's calendar.

RR in a later post. Here is the graph if anyone cares.

DrWJODonnell

Good job with that. Way to empty the tank. It's also nice to see that other people go crazy thinking about the details and how to go faster. Looks like you went too hard from the start and paid for that on the downhill, but then again, you said that you have trouble keeping up the wattage in any case. All in all, I think you will see the power graph becoe much more steady as you go along but that is still a great time on what appears to be a very tough course.

way to go!

mikearena

I was going to let you know that your results were up on floridacycling.com for some reason, but I see you've already discovered that...

Nice going!

KrisPistofferson

Congratulations, man. I'm in Chattanooga, and I was just curious, who's your preferred LBS? I'm a commuter, but I was curious about this from a racer's perspective. (Suck Creek Cycle and East Ridge Cycle for me, although I am of the opinion we don't really have a bad LBS in town, except for that weird old man on Ringgold Road.)

Big Scott

Good job Tony, I blew up pretty bad on the climb right after the start and had to step it down a bit or I was going to pull over and puke. I got 14th with a time of 13:36, I was the big guy on the 64cm tripple. This was my 2nd time on areo bars and I started to get into my groove during the middle roller section but could not keep much speed on the climb after the 2nd 90 degree turn. I managed to put some power down on the tail end and finished strong. At the start I told my 30 sec man (Jeff B.) that it's gonna suck for him if he gets passed by a fat guy (275lbs)... I didn't pass him but I did beat his time and no body came around me so I guess I did OK but felt that I could have done better if it was longer. The crit was fast and the turns were a bit too skecthy for my fatt asp but I had fun all the same.

I can't wait till I drop some more LB's so I can be able to hang on the climbs but in reality I don't think I'll ever be able to attack them at my future weight so I'm now wondering why I even bother to show up at these races. That climb in the RR killed me and I tried my hardest to make it back to the pack. I passed a bunch of folks during my effort and managed to bridge up to a small group before the start of the 2nd lap. I put some work in for the pack and then found they were not doing their share and left them. I worked together with another rider for a while then left him on one of the downhills then picked up yet another rider I knew and told him to suck my wheel and pulled him to a larger pack and we all worked together ( I worked more of course) and finished.

I'd love to see what my power tap numbers are but I'm riding a thousand dollar POS and don't have the $$ for such a device yet.

-Scott

king-tony

Nice job Scott. I'd like to see your power numbers as well. At 275 and with the time you put up they had to be really impressive. Dropping weight helps. I'm down from 235 last season to 192 this morning. One of the nice things about carrying a lot of weight is it naturally makes you more powerful and when you drop the weight you keep a lot of the power. I skipped the crit, but will post my RR report later. Overall it was a nice event. Keep up the good work!

king-tony

Thanks Mike. I was concerned about how quickly results would be posted since we did not get the TT times until the next day, but the RR and crit times went up fast.

wrestlr

That was one of the funnest crits and road races I have ever done. Nice crowd and turnout for the crit downtown and then the road race course was beautiful in the valley.
-Mike