Wednesday's TT ... on Thursday!

Being just over 2 weeks out from D Day (Ironman NZ) it was a good week to get my bike serviced. 

So, Monday night I took Craig's and my bike over to Troy the bike guru of guru's to tune it up and give it a final going over.  Troy said that he would have it ready by Wednesday night, so the scheduled Wed session was changed to Thursday.  Thankfully Faye was kind enough to swap also, so that we each had company.

The crit track was quite busy and when Faye arrived it was in full swing.  However, we set out and I quickly found my rhythm and the path wasn't too congested. It was hard work, I wish I had my HR monitor on so that I could keep an eye on it as I was working pretty hard.

My distance for the 30mins was 18:13, 36.26km/h average.  I am absolutely thrilled with this as the last TT I did was a month ago and I averaged 36.5km/h, however I was drafting behind Craig and Richard, where today's TT was pretty much on my own.  I did draft a bit when some faster cyclists overtook me and I drafted behind people prior to overtaking, but nothing like being dragged around the crit by Craig and Richard.

Out on the track today was a wheelie cyclist and we both finished at the same time and were packing up beside each other in the carpark.  He asked me how I went and I told him that I feel stuffed!  We started chatting and after talking about the training sets we each did on the track today George tells me that he is the QLD reigning 20k TT champion and he has the Australian Championships coming up in April which he is training hard for.  He is racing 2 events: the 20k TT and the 65k road race.  He has been ranked number 2 in Australia for the past 3 years and is hoping to reach number 1 this year.  I told him about my Ironman training and that I hoped to just finish the race.  We both wished each other good luck, I hope George can bring it home for QLD and himself and be number 1 this year.  I also mentioned to him that he was really poor to draft behind... 

The dreaded TT bike!

Today's session was a crit session;

30mins easy warmup
30mins HARD time trial
30mins easy cool down.

Now, Craig picked up his sexy Ridley Dean TT bike last Friday, so this was to be it's debut.  Craig was rearing to go and I was wondering if it was going to make a huge difference to his speed.

Well, the question was answered!  We started the TT and I was in front waiting to be passed by either Craig or Richard, however it took half a lap or so for Craig to come around me and I immediately pounced on his rear wheel.  I was working HARD to stay on to him.  There were a few moments through the corners where I moved off his wheel and I could feel the extra resistance, so I sunk back behind his wheel again.  I managed to stay like this for a couple of laps before I started to get a bit cocky and I moved out from behind his wheel to see if I could overtake on the straight.  This was not a good move!  There was a headwind and it was as if I had let a wrapper out of the car window - I just flew backwards!  I took it up a notch to try and get back onto his wheel, but after half a lap of trying I had to throw up the white flag and settle into something that would get me through 30 minutes without passing out!

I settled into a good rhythm of hard cycling when Rich overtook me as though I was standing still, so I put in another gut busting effort and managed to get onto his back wheel.  Once again, my heart was thumping!  I even managed to get in front of Richard a couple of times for some very brief moments before he regained the lead.  I think this ensured that we both worked hard! 

After the 30minutes I had cycled 18.28km's.  36.5kms/hour is not too shabby for me!  This is slightly quicker than the last time I did a 30min TT and thankfully Craig's was about 2kms/hour quicker than his last time trial so it shows that I had reason to be bursting my lungs trying to stick with him and it also demonstrates the advantages of a TT bike!  I can understand the benefits, however I am not ready for a TT bike when I don't even really like getting down on my aero bars.

Craig is in love...  I'm not sure I am still number one!

Cycle TT

We were at the Nundah Crit track at the bright and early time of 5am...

It was a 30min warmup followed by a 30min TT followed by a 30min easy cool down.

The track was wet, but there was no rain thank goodness and even better - there was no wind.

My 30mins I got to 17.5kms (average 35kms/hr), last week was 16.8kms so I was happy with that.  Craig caught me about halfway through and we played around a bit; I drafted off him, then I overtook him, then he overtook me and then I drafted off him, etc, etc.  I tried to not be drafting off him when I didn't need to so that it was a solid effort the whole way through and I think that you actually work a lot harder doing it like this, but it will blur the figures.

Chatting to Craig afterwards we are kind of thinking that we might start them together and ride them together.  That way we will both be working hard and pushing each other on.  My fear of course is seeing as I am only hanging on to him by a thread at the moment that once he gets the Ridley it will be Bye Bye Emma!