Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The 2009 race season has begun!

Sunday's indoor Time Trial was the first race of my 2009 season. I had set myself a goal of completing the course in under 23 minutes, so now I'm a little disappointed because that I did not make it. I ended up with a time of 24:49.7.

I was afraid that time would secure my spot in last place, but actually, I beat a guy (2 guys if you count the one that DNF'ed). I did push a peak watts of 225- but my ave watts ended up at only 126 (in contrast, Pops pushed a peak watts of 452 with an ave of 284- he's a machine!).

My race strategy was simple; use my middle chain ring to crank a high cadence and hold my heart rate at about 5 beats above threshold until the climbs, shift to big ring and stand on the climbs allowing heart rate to go as high as max, return to middle ring and recover (back to threshold +5) on the downhills, repeat as necessary. I was able to do this only through the first climb- as I could not get my heart rate back to threshold +5, which meant I could not manage to stand up on the subsequent climbs, which meant my "strategy" was now "shot to hell" after the first climb. (Hum... may need to re-think that strategy for next race.) One thing that did help me throughout the race was my "tunes". Santa brought me an iPod for Christmas, so I had my collection of favorite "inspirational pedal songs" to provide encouragement.

We have 3 more races over the next several weeks, and I'm going to keep trying to beat that 23 minute mark. I guess "it's a process!"

9 comments:

Kathleen said...

Hey, there you are! Good to hear from you, but I'm sorry you didn't do as well as you'd hoped. Here's to a better time at the next event. And take comfort that you're in much better shape than those of us who have nothing but dust on their bikes.

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