Nationals TT Details....

My individual TT was at about 9am. As luck would have it, the rain started about 5 minutes before my start time. It rained for about 90% of my time on course, but I don't think it affected my ride at all. The Power file above is my individual ride....here are the numbers:

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entire ride:

Time: 50:52 ( I think my official time was 50:53 or 54)

Average (and normalized) power: 344 watts

avg cadence: 92 rpm

distance: 24.13 mi

speed:28.5 mph

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Splits:

Out:

time: 24:46

power:342 watts

cadence:93 rpm

speed:28.94 mph

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return:

time:26:04

power:345 watts

speed:28.03 mph

cadence 91 rpm

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I really felt pretty good during the ride and knew pretty early on that I was going well. My target "cruising power" was about 340 watts. I knew I was good as every time I checked I was at or above 340 and feeling comfortable....or at least as comfortable as one can feel while riding nearly all out.

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What can we glean from the numbers above? One thing is pacing: note that the return was significantly slower than the out leg, but the power was higher. This is due to the tailwind out , headwind return...and I also suspect that there was a net elevation loss going to the turnaround as we were going downstream along the Ohio River. This is good pacing. It would have been easy to overcook the first half, feeling good riding with a tailwind. I held back slightly and it paid off. My weight was about 147lbs or 66.82kg. The power over this TT gives me about 5.15 watts per kg @ FTP. Not bad. I am quite happy I was able to do that...for 4th place in my age group..., and I believe it was about the best I could have hoped for given my current fitness level.

After my individual ride the weather cleared, but the wind kicked up significantly. I had just under 3 hours between this ride and the tandem ride. Unfortunately I didn't rest as much as I should have. I found myself walking around, talking to other riders....which was great, but not the best for recovery. Just as Cara and I were headed to the start on the tandem, I noticed my age group was on the podium. I ran over, jumped on my step, raised arms for the photo then ran back off to get on the big bike. The whole thing took about 15 seconds and was really quite funny.

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With a huge wind behind the tandem on the out leg of the TT course we were FLYING. I have no metrics, but we were riding 29-34 mph most of the way out. Since they started the tandems at 2 minute intervals it was difficult to tell where we were in relation to our competition. I knew the return into the wind would be very tough and tried to hold back some. At the turn we saw we had only gained 15 or 20 seconds on the team ahead of us. I admit I felt a little panic. We would need to ride hard to the finish. Everything was great....we were riding fast and strong until about 109KM to go when the fatigue really started to hit me. i have to say that the last 5 miles of that ride was one of the most excruciatingly painful things I have ever done. I suffered....knowing that we needed to push all the way through. We did and we won....but ouch. Our time was something like 50:42...faster than my individual time! We have never done that before....usually we are close but just a little slower.

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We had the fastest mixed tandem time of the day by about a minute and were faster than all but a few of the men's teams.

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Tuesday I was wrecked.....

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a2