Weekend Update
This last week I did a smattering of training rides, roller miles and what not. With only three weeks to go before ROF. My fitness won’t be like it was for RAO, but hopefully it will at least be good enough for a decent finish.
Saturday, after attending a friends wedding, I hit the road for a quick loop around the lake Washington to loosen up the leg's before the team TT on Sunday. I did the 60 mile loop in about three hours, just riding light tempo, and trying to make a effort never to go too deep. The whole goal today was to loosen the legs for the TT on Sunday.
Sunday, was the Team TT, some how I’ve gotten a very bad habit of getting inadequate sleep before nearly every TT I’ve done this year. With 6 hrs in the sack today’s was no different. Jay’s wife, Amy was absolutely fantastic and shuttled Jay, Ben, and I down to the TT, this was really helpful as it enabled me to snag another hr of sleep on the way to Elma.
Down in Elma, we went into the TT, with the ambition to snag top spots on the podium. Unfortunately things didn’t go off quite as planned, leaving the podium spots just a few seconds out of our reach.
Before the TT, the team, Jay, Matt, Ben and I had a great warm-up. Then on the line, there was some confusion as to the start format. We all false started costing us a 5 second penalty and a few extra seconds in lost time due to organizational problems. The start left us all shaken and it took us just a few seconds longer then it should have to group up. Then on the road things started to gel, we putting out strong efforts rotating through the line. Then I made the mistake, of upping the tempo, to my ITT tempo. The higher tempo was a little much and caused gaps in our line to form. Rotating off the front, I’d try and fill the holes and take extra pulls but this wasn’t enough.
Then about 2/3 the way out after one of my pulls we lost one of our riders. This really shook us up. In hind sight, it’s obvious what we should have done, the rider was having difficulty holding our tempo and we should have just continued on as a team of three, the minimum number needed for an official finish. Our plan had been to ride it as a team, and finish strong with all four riders. With this in mind after my pull I hit my breaks and slid way way back to pace our now blown rider back up. Sliding back, the blown rider yelled just go! Go! At this point it clicked and I attacked back up and hooked up with our other two riders making a team of three, and we continued on. I’m sure this total F@#$K Up cost us at least a minute.
Once we were a team of three I began to take longer harder pulls and the miles flew by. At one point we caught a team of four women riding for group health, we passed them on the flat doing about 28.8 mph.. Yeah we were cooking. Then a few miles from the finish, we were cut off on a corner by a truck, causing us to loose a little time, then it was down a quick decent, where we hit ~30 mph and with a big scream into the finish line.
We ended up finishing 4th, with an average speed of ~25.5 mph for 30+ miles. We missed 3rd, by 2 seconds, and 2nd by around 12, and first by over a minute. In our minds we know we were strong enough for at least 2nd place, but unfortunately that’s not how the cards fell today.
Events:
NWTTS in only 5 more days!
Ring of Fire 9/10
It’s Tartan Time!
Saturday, after attending a friends wedding, I hit the road for a quick loop around the lake Washington to loosen up the leg's before the team TT on Sunday. I did the 60 mile loop in about three hours, just riding light tempo, and trying to make a effort never to go too deep. The whole goal today was to loosen the legs for the TT on Sunday.
Sunday, was the Team TT, some how I’ve gotten a very bad habit of getting inadequate sleep before nearly every TT I’ve done this year. With 6 hrs in the sack today’s was no different. Jay’s wife, Amy was absolutely fantastic and shuttled Jay, Ben, and I down to the TT, this was really helpful as it enabled me to snag another hr of sleep on the way to Elma.
Down in Elma, we went into the TT, with the ambition to snag top spots on the podium. Unfortunately things didn’t go off quite as planned, leaving the podium spots just a few seconds out of our reach.
Before the TT, the team, Jay, Matt, Ben and I had a great warm-up. Then on the line, there was some confusion as to the start format. We all false started costing us a 5 second penalty and a few extra seconds in lost time due to organizational problems. The start left us all shaken and it took us just a few seconds longer then it should have to group up. Then on the road things started to gel, we putting out strong efforts rotating through the line. Then I made the mistake, of upping the tempo, to my ITT tempo. The higher tempo was a little much and caused gaps in our line to form. Rotating off the front, I’d try and fill the holes and take extra pulls but this wasn’t enough.
Then about 2/3 the way out after one of my pulls we lost one of our riders. This really shook us up. In hind sight, it’s obvious what we should have done, the rider was having difficulty holding our tempo and we should have just continued on as a team of three, the minimum number needed for an official finish. Our plan had been to ride it as a team, and finish strong with all four riders. With this in mind after my pull I hit my breaks and slid way way back to pace our now blown rider back up. Sliding back, the blown rider yelled just go! Go! At this point it clicked and I attacked back up and hooked up with our other two riders making a team of three, and we continued on. I’m sure this total F@#$K Up cost us at least a minute.
Once we were a team of three I began to take longer harder pulls and the miles flew by. At one point we caught a team of four women riding for group health, we passed them on the flat doing about 28.8 mph.. Yeah we were cooking. Then a few miles from the finish, we were cut off on a corner by a truck, causing us to loose a little time, then it was down a quick decent, where we hit ~30 mph and with a big scream into the finish line.
We ended up finishing 4th, with an average speed of ~25.5 mph for 30+ miles. We missed 3rd, by 2 seconds, and 2nd by around 12, and first by over a minute. In our minds we know we were strong enough for at least 2nd place, but unfortunately that’s not how the cards fell today.
Events:
NWTTS in only 5 more days!
Ring of Fire 9/10
It’s Tartan Time!
Labels: Training
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