Saturday was my first TT of the season. This post will be short because there is only so much to talk about regarding the TT itself -- It was hard. I tried to go fast. There you go...there is the race report.
Instead of focusing on the race itself, I decided I'd write a bit about the preparation I go through for an event like this.
Last week I inherited Sarah's old Cervelo P2SL when she upgraded to a P3C. My first step was to get a baseline fit. I was able to get a decent fit on my stationary trainer, but the real test was to get it out on the road. It took me up until the night before the race to get a fit I actually liked, although I'm not in love with it. I need to find a longer stem before the next TT.
Most of my time trials this year will be in the 8-9 mile range, so comfort definitely matters less to me than aerodynamics and power. I used my powertap, a stopwatch, and some cool software to help me figure out what looks fast as opposed to what IS fast.
I didn't have a chance to do an all-out practice TT, so I really didn't know how to gauge my power for the event. I decided to shoot for 10% less than my 20 min power on my roadbike. I ended up going quite a bit harder than that, but it felt right to go that hard. That's good news for the bike fit. Apparently it's powerful.
I ended up 2nd in the p/1/2/3 division, which was good enough for the 3rd fastest solo time of the day. I owe a lot of that to the powertap. I know that if I didn't have a little yellow box telling me to take it easy for the first 5 minutes, I would have blown up early and limped across the line.
The downside is, first place murdered me. His name is Will Gault. He's a very talented rider, so the fact that he beat me doesn't phase me. The fact that he beat me as bad as he did means that I need to make some pretty major changes to my bike in order to come close to him. My power alone won't get me there.
Joey finished just a few seconds slower than me, so that put 2 of us on the p/1/2/3 podium. He looked great on his TT bike. He hasn't been on that bike very much either, so we both will have a lot of room to grow.
Les Banta won his division. If you haven't seen his Giant TT bike, you need to check it out. It looks awesome, and with his motor it moves fast! Ryan Ellis and Dustin Sallee put down great times in the largest division of the day.
Our women's team took the top 4 spots. Very impressive! They had the 2nd largest field of the day. Sarah took 2nd place at her first TT ever on her new bike.
Tomorrow I'll have a write-up for NWA Spring Classic. I'm too tired to type all that tonight.
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