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By a twist of fate I ended up doing a back to back 25 then 50 M TT this weekend. It wasn’t planned like that at all. My three A races were a 50M, followed by a 50M the next weekend and then a 100 the following weekend. The first 50 was cancelled because of road works then the 100 was cancelled for the same reason.
My club was promoting a 25 on the middle weekend (yesterday as I write) and I decided to enter that to get a 25 in this season and thought I would just hang on for the 50 the next day.
Thursday I do a 12.6M local club event and get a PB on my 3rd outing on it (22.0 MPH). Saturday I do the 25M. The first 10M is a TT course in it’s own right – the V212 and I went through 10 in 26:50 which is a season’s best. I hung on to finish in 1:08:49 which is about 2 minutes below my best (2 years ago) but I was comfortable with that. I did feel tired last night and was a bit apprehensive about today’s 50.
The 50M course used around 50% of yesterday’s course and I went out on the first 10M again (same V212 course) at roughly the same effort – or so I thought. This time 28:30. I knew it was going to be a long day. I could not get my heart rate up and felt tired on a couple of the climbs. I ended up with 2:28:15 (20.04 MPH) which was beyond poor. Only 15 minutes off my best time!!
Lesson learned. I cannot recover quickly enough to do races on consecutive days.
I did learn a few things
- I can get a 10M PB if I find the right course and conditions
- I am getting fitter as I race more – no surprise there.
- I prefer the longer distances to a 10M event. That isn’t a surprise to me really as it was the same when running or rowing.
There was a course photographer out on the 25M course and I bought 3 images from him – only 0.75p each for web sized format.
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I posted them on the UK Time Trialling FB group and asked for comments.
These were very helpful but also one was worrying.
Several thought my saddle was too low as can be seen in the first photograph where my leg is at full stroke but still has a lot of bend in it.
The helmet is wrong for me as my head faces down. That is true as I find it reduces the wind noise if I look down – and I assume that makes me more aero
Maybe lower my stem to get my back up higher – although others thought it had a decent shape to it.
The worrying point was that someone thought my saddle might be too far back and the bike too small. There is a lot of movement either way with the saddle.
Loose top does not help – maybe a skinsuit?? More expense.
Anyway I am going to see a bike fitter tomorrow who I have used before. I did have a bike fit when I bought the bike but the fitter said he didn’t do much with TT setups so he fit it as best as he thought best. Hopefully the bike will be the right size and he can make a few adjustments as necessary. I might be doing a local 10 on Tuesday night so that would be a good time to test it out.