Alabama State Time Trial (do-over)

My attempt at the Alabama State Time Trial last week shortly after having some pretty bad food poisoning went really poorly. I had been looking forward to comparing my time with what I had done two years ago, so today I put my clip-on bars back onto the bike and swapped out to my Reynolds Wheels so that I could try again. I picked a relatively flat route to get all the way out there to Columbiana since it was going to be a long ride in the heat. But showers this morning, cloudy skies, and rain still in the air brought the temp way down to 70s and 80s for most of the ride.

When I finally made it out to the high school, I put my foot down on the start line, hit the lap button and took off. I initially set a target wattage of 300 watts, but I felt good and kept the average (including the initial surge from the start line) closer to 325 watts for the first few miles. Watts were gradually dropping from my average as I tried to keep my current wattage close to 300 on the flatter sections and 400+ on the steep rollers. On the downhills, though, I didn’t want to spin like crazy so I just let the power drop to the low 200s.

At the turnaround, I still had a 310 watt average and 24.5mph speed average so that gave me confidence to push it hard on the way back to keep a 300+ watt average for my effort. I ended up setting a half hour’s worth of power records along the way. My time ended up being just over 58 minutes, which I believe would have put me into 3rd or 4th place in the Pro/1/2 category. Definitely redeems the miserable 1 hour, 17 minute effort last week.

New power records for today’s tt effort (click to enlarge)

This course is really a great time trial course for criterium racers b/c you can take advantage of the steep hills to use your upper body strength and give your legs a bit of a break. And since you are only going 10-15mph on the steeper hills, the aerodynamic penalty of rocking the bike back and forth doesn’t matter so much. Of course, if you have a disc wheel, large front chainring and full aero setup, you might be able to carry enough momentum on the steep downhills to top out some of the rollers.

Heartrate summary for today’s tt effort

Heartrate/power/speed plot for today’s tt effort. Power smoothed with 30second smoothing filter (click to enlarge)

Pedal force vs pedal velocity for today’s tt effort (click to enlarge)

And finally, some Garmin screenshots from the ride including the lap summary screen with different stats shown … (and my TT position setup, which is the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in a time trial so I wanted to take some pics to remember how to set it up like this again in a couple weeks for the Georgia Cycling Gran Prix time trial)

TT setup 1

TT setup 2

Average speed – 24.1mph

Average power – 309w

Average heartrate – 172bpm

Average cadence – 79rpm

Total elevation gain 1243′ (off by about 600′ due to rain, Garmin mount position)

Max speed annotated

Complete ride statistics 1

Complete ride statistics 2

Partial elevation profile showing the 280 ebsco parking lot climb

Alabama State Time Trial race report

I had been looking forward to this race for the past couple weeks because the course is amazing – with lots of hills – in a topographically interesting area. Several ridge lines merge and end near the turnaround point. See the topocreator map from my post about the 2010 time trial (where I did much better).

Well, on Thursday night Kristine and I celebrated our 9 year wedding anniversary. In the middle of the night, I woke up with some severe intestinal issues – eventually losing 6 pounds of water weight and collapsing on the floor on the way back from the bathroom in the early morning. After spending an entire day in bed and resting and drinking, I started to feel better in the evening. So I thought maybe if I felt really good in the morning, I would go ahead and do the time trial. Not a good idea as indicated by the stats in the screenshot with 1 mile to go in my race:

By the time I had driven to the start (the original plan was to ride to the start for a 90-100 mile ride like Wednesday), I was not feeling great anymore. After a 12 mile easy warm-up, I was feeling less great. Travis Sherman said it best – “you look hung over”. I started out with a target wattage of 325 watts and was able to maintain that for about 5 minutes – at which point I started getting nauseous. My next thought was “ok”, let’s shoot for 300watts. Then as I couldn’t even get my current power over 300, I thought maybe “250″ would be ok. A couple minutes later I realized that the only way I was going to finish the race at all is if I backed way off, so I started soft pedaling to eventually finish in 6th place (last).

So, here is future advice for anybody with food poisoning 24 hours before the start of a 40k tt … even if you feel all better when you wake up the morning of the race, don’t do it. Stay in, rest, and watch the first stage of the Tour de France instead!

Mississippi Gran Prix – Day 2 – Road Race and Time Trial

Quick Summary
My teammate Pat Allison and I took 6th and 7th in the road race in a strategic 80+ mile road race. My other teammate Justin got into a great two-man move for over half of a 27 mile lap. This forced other teams to chase and gave Pat and I a much needed break from attacking and covering moves. Unfortunately, Justin’s break-mate Russell Walker flatted towards the end of the second lap. Earlier in the race, I had my own bad luck with a broken rear spoke, but Pat and Justin stopped and helped pace me back up to the group – awesome teammates! Later in the evening, we all rocked the TT merckx style and had decent times.

The Data
I didn’t have power data from the road race b/c of the broken spoke in my powertap rear wheel. I had the iBike on, but then the wheel magnet on my front wheel slid down so the iBike shut off with no speed data coming into it.

TIME TRIAL
Dist:        2.84 mi (0:06:09)
Energy:     168.9 kJ
Cals Burn:  161.4 kcal
Braking:      0.0 kJ (0.0%)
          Min   Avg    Max
Power     223  457.6  1439  W
Aero        0  376.5   766  W
Rolling    10   35.8    43  W
Gravity  -600    7.5   327  W
Speed     7.4   27.7  33.4  mi/h
Wind      8.4   27.1  35.9  mi/h
Elev      314    341   364  ft
Slope    -5.5   0.08   4.1  %
Caden      29   79.3    96  rpm
HR        112  164.9   181  bpm
NP:443W IF:1.60 TSS:26 VI:0.97
CdA: 0.342 m^2; Crr: 0.0039
168 lbs; 4/14/2012 6:45 PM
76 degF; 1013 mbar

Pensacola Stage Race Day 1 – Road Race and Time Trial

Road Race Summary
I’ve got a 4th place streak going on here with two races in a row missing the podium by one spot. The race went well until the final sprint where I came in a disappointing 4th from a 5-man break after losing the wheel of the winner Grant Potter (Z-Motion). Phil Gaimon (Kenda) for sure deserves most aggressive rider since he realized that Grant would win the sprint from our breakaway group and repeatedly tried to dislodge him with attack after attack in the last 10 miles. But it was altogether for the finish with Grant taking the win, Jonathan Atwell (The Hub) 2nd, Serghei Tvetkov (Aerocat) 3rd, me 4th, and Phil 5th. Our break had a sizeable margin of 3-4 minutes over the field by the end.

Time Trial Summary
The time trial was amazingly fun and also went pretty well. I surpassed my predicted 6 minute power threshold by a few watts (see annotated CP curve towards bottom of this post). My goal at the beginning of the time trial was to focus on maintaining a lap average of 375 watts. After the first couple minutes, I was still well into the 400s, so I began to be really motivated that maybe I could maintain 400 watts for the entire TT. But then my legs started to fade and my power started to drop. I still had a lot of upper body strength left, though, so I stood up and cranked it back up to 400 watts a couple times. Normally, this would be a big time trial aero “no-no”, but with a massive tailwind, I’m pretty sure that it was OK since I was able to get my speed back up both times. In the end, my average speed was just over 29mph, and my average power was 395 watts. Checking the results today, it looks like I was somewhere in the top 15 maybe around 13th, but I was last place of the five of us in the break from the road race, which put me in 5th place on the GC going into Sunday’s criterium (next post). Time trial data posted at the bottom of this post. Also – kudos to John Hart for absolutely smoking the time trial with a time of 5’35″ for an average speed of 33mph!!!

Road Race Details and Data

Here is how the road race played out:

1st lap – there were lots of attacks/chasing in the first few miles with one group of 3 eventually getting away and another group of 3 chasing. When we made it to the longest hill on the course, Phil Gaimon (Kenda) attacked hard. A few of us were able to hold his wheel as we caught the break by the top of the hill. They latched onto our group essentially turning the race into a field split. There wasn’t enough cooperation in the large front group, so after a few miles the rest of the field caught back up to us. I believe there were a few more attacks to finish off the lap, but it was basically all together by the start of the second lap.

2nd lap – Towards the beginning of the second lap, a small group of maybe 3 or 4 riders including Jake Brewer (Herring Gas) rolled up the road. I attacked repeatedly to try to bridge across, but every time field would string out and chase. John Hart (Friends of the Great Smokies) was able to escape, though, and set out in pursuit. A few more riders were able to get away solo and chase. Eventually, there were at least 8 guys up the road including Serghei Tvetcov (Aerocat). This group all came together into one lead group. I tried a couple more times to get away or form a second chase group before the long gradual downhill section, but I was reeled back in each time. So on the downhill, I decided to rest in anticipation of the downhill. I was near the front when I saw a rider getting ready to attack at the base of the hill. I grabbed his wheel and followed him knowing that the real attack would come a little bit later. Sure enough, Phil came flying around a few seconds later. I drilled it hard and was able to close the gap back up to him by the top with only one rider in tow – Jonathan. My teammate Pat Allison was caught in the middle behind us. I could hear him yelling across the top that he was coming so I stopped working so that he could finish the bridge to our chase group. Unfortunately, Phil and Jonathan were drilling it super hard through a heavy crosswind section so Pat was unable to make the bridge. I was struggling just to hang onto their wheel, so I can’t imagine crossing the gap alone. By the end of the crosswind section, Pat was swallowed by the field and we were getting close to finishing the bridge to the lead group. This was about 3/4 of the way through the second lap. As a large group, we rotated well for the rest of the lap and kept a pretty good speed.

3rd lap – A couple miles into the start of the third lap, we could see that the field was not too far behind us. At this point, the commitment level in the group really dropped. People were still pulling, but not very hard. At one point, after John Hart and Phil pulled I noticed a gap behind Phil. So I attacked hoping that the two of them would come with me to form another group. They didn’t, though, and so I ended up riding off the front solo for a couple minutes. When the group came back together, we continued rotating but the impetus was definitely gone from the group. This was right when we reached the rolling section on the front side of the course. I noticed another gap opening up behind Serghei as he was getting ready to pull so I attacked again and this time there were three of us together. Phil and Grant bridged up to us a couple minutes later to form the final break of five. At this point in the race, we worked together really well with everybody pulling hard because the rest of the break behind us was chasing hard. Eventually, though, we started to pull away and get a sizeable gap. Our group was an interesting one with one strong sprinter and four all-rounders (i.e., not sprinters). For the last 10 miles, starting with the long hill on the course, it was attack after attack. Phil attacked the most with Serghei counter attacking several times with me on his wheel. Jonathan attacked a few times, and I attacked once or twice. Grant was able to chase back each move and still take the sprint at the end!

Going into the final sprint, I was sitting on Grant’s wheel after Phil had attacked and strung out the group. Serghei countered to start the sprint in the final few hundred meters. As Grant surged for the sprint with 200 meters to go, I lost his wheel for a second but was closing it back up to him when Jonathan realized that Grant was the better wheel than Serghei. So Jonathan pulled over to grab the wheel in the space that I had opened up. It was my fault for letting the gap open up in the first place, but Grant’s surge was probably several hundred watts more powerful than mine and it took time for me to get his draft and move back up. In the end, the two of them were able to squeeze by Serghei for the finish and I only made it halfway around him – so the final finish order was Grant, Jonathan, Serghei, me, and Phil.

All-in-all, it was a good race with a somewhat disappointing finish. There were lots of tactical sections as well as flat-out sections as well as strategic battles. Fun, hard racing. Lots of data below …

Road race data

Pensacola Road Race (Milton, FL) – annotated power map

Pensacola Road Race – Annotated critical power curve from Golden Cheetah

Quadrant analysis (pedal force / cadence) – road race

Time Trial data

Pensacola Beach Time Trial – annotated power map

Pensacola Beach Time Trial – annotated critical power curve

Quadrant analysis (pedal force / cadence) – time trial

Labor Day Omnium Day 1 – Time Trial

I am really starting to like time trials. This was a fun technical course with lots of small rollers. The start was at the bottom of the steepest hill so I may have gone out a little too hard averaging 650watts from the start to the top of the hill, but dropping to 500 watts for the first 30 seconds having to coast into and around the first sharp turn over the top of the hill. I didn’t feel like I was going too hard, but I struggled keeping the power up on the downhill and sharp turn averaging 351watts and 304watts for the next two 30 second intervals. Then on the rolling part of the course, I feel like I lost some time trying to find the best gear to be in to ramp it up on the downhills and maintain speed over the uphills. To summarize, I ended up averaging 351 watts for 9’45″ for the 4.5 mile course. That’s compared to 363 watts average for 8’30″ on a 4 mile course last week at River Gorge. My time was good enough for 27th out of 55 registered starters (top half in an NRC time trial!!!)

Anderson Civic Center Time Trial Power Map annotated

Labor Day Omnium Time Trial – power graph

I left my heartrate monitor strap at work from my morning commute (Kristine picked me up at Samford) – so no heartrate data this weekend On the plus side, it was really nice to race without having to fool with wearing a heartrate monitor strap and still have all the meaningful data from the power meter during the race.