Monday, March 07, 2005

Weekend Update with Team Tartan

This weekend could either be thought of as the end of the rest week or as a more gradual start to the next phase in the training. The plan for Saturday was to do the local Seattle Randonneurs annual 100k ride, yeah its only ~63 miles, which at this point isn’t anything. The plan was to just do the ride at a totally chill pace with the idea of finishing the ride feeling like we hadn’t really done anything. This is exactly, what happened, on the final turn, Ben remarked, "Kenneth, I though we were going to ride today, after which we both just laughed". The funny thing too, was there seemed to be a group of more "senior" riders who really wanted draft us. It felt good to know that they worked hard that we didn't.

Sunday, was the start of the racing season with the 10 mile Ice breaker Time Trial. Some how I'd totally missed the pre-registration. After only 6hrs of sleep, I was up back up and heading down to Enumclaw for to register for the TT. The start time for my TT was 11:55, which gave me close to 4 hrs to warm-up for the TT event.

After breakfast and doing some final gear setup, I had 2hrs left. At this point both crew chief Ben who was going to go 2 min before me, and I hit the road for a little warm-up. We did around an hour on the road and then were back at the start to put in some final time on both the rollers and trainers.

The weather on Sunday was nothing short of fantastic, it was hot, hot enough to only wear summer riding clothes. No gloves, no leggings, etc just a helmet, jersey, shorts, socks and shoes. After a brief session stretching, I was on the line.

Ben took off, then a 12 year old junior racer, and then I went. Off the line, I was jazzed, I hit 29mph, my heart rate hit 165, and I dialed it back a notch to ease into the event. Less then a mile into the course, I'd caught the junior. After this I didn't see anyone till I reached the turn around at a little more the 5 miles. While I was hot, off the line, after getting into a tempo for some crazy reason I kept reverting to “Ultra-Mode” and had to keep remind myself that I was in a TT needed to push it. My heart rate just sat in the 168 - 170 BPM range. (Way to high for ultra’s but way to low for the TT)

After the turn around, I caught a few riders, but not Ben. I think these riders had hit the road three and four minutes before I'd started. I really should have pushed a little harder on the return stretch. When I rolled over the finish line, I felt like I could have continued on at my pace for much longer.

End result:
Officially 10 mile TT
My computers distance (9.81 miles)
Time: 23 minutes 20 seconds
5th Place in the Cat 4's.

I was only 11 seconds off of 3rd place, 20 seconds off of second. I know I could have been a little faster if I'd had any idea as to how close I was riding to the others. Master crew chief Ben had a fantastic TT finishing 8th. To put the times in perspective, last year I did the same course in a little over 25 min, so things are looking good.

After the TT I did easy spinning on the rollers for another hour. The recovery week has been really good, the legs are feeling really good right now.

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