Between my training over the past 4 weeks being less than consistent and the course being different (longer and a hill) I didn’t have high expectations for this time trial but I still needed to show up and get it done.
I rolled up at 6:50 am when registration opened to get my bib number started getting everything ready. I did a little warm up for 6-8 minutes. Warming up is always my least favorite part of racing time trials. I ended up my warm up at the start line. It always nice to start near the front; today I was the fourth cyclist to go off.
Since I was in a bit of a funk I didn’t check what my previous best power average was. I thought it was around 165 and raced based on that. This course is fairly flat into a left hand turn that goes in to a hill with a turn around at the top. At the turn/base of the hill my average watts were 164 which at the time I thought was decent. As expected, my power crept up a bit on the hill to 168. After the turn around I spun out and went back down to a 164 average. I spent the rest of the way trying to get my average up to 170. Around mile 8 my legs started feeling heavy and it was a mental push to keep going. I ended up finishing at a 168 average.
After the race I looked at my past peaks in training peaks. I was disappointed to be reminded that my past PR was 187, not 170 🤦🏽♀️. I could feel I wasn’t as drained as I should have been but at the same time my legs were starting to struggle at mile 8. This course isn’t as flat and strait as the normal time trial course which meant I wasn’t as focused on form (cadence, smooth turn over etc) and it showed with a lower cadence than usual which I think affected leg fatigue. I’m going to put in some consistent and solid work over the next month and see if I can get another sold PR for the season.
