This afternoon was the first official time trial in the Providence Bicycle summer series. I was initially a bit nervous as I was expecting more riders and was thinking I'd be way out of my league potentially. In the end it was just Jon and Sean (from the NE-Tri club) and myself. So I was put at ease right away which was nice. We decided that we would stagger our starts based on guestimates as to our times. So I left first, Jon three minutes behind me, and Sean six minutes after me.
As much as I'd just ridden the course on Friday I was a bit tentative on the uphills. I think I could have attacked a little harder on those first few hills in miles 1-5. Not much harder, but a little. I did however descend really well today and I was very pleased with how I did on miles 5-8 as I was hammering away on the big gears and cruising setting a new fastest descent speed for me of 34.4mph. It felt really good too. More stable than last time. I'm slowly getting the hang of this. I felt like there were several moments of poor shifts or wobbliness I need to work on though as every one of those costs me a bit of time.
I was surprised that Jon caught me on the dam at mile 8. He had mentioned he might be slow on the hills so I was hoping I might be able to hold him off a little longer. But alas it wasn't meant to be. I think I eased up a tiny tiny bit on the dam too. I remembered it as being rougher than it actually was. Either way though even if I'd pushed hard there he still would have caught me on the first hill. I hoped I might catch him back on the climb but he managed to stay in front of me and I saw him a few times but then lost him towards mile 10.
I did ok up the big hills, better than in practice and they didn't seem so bad after Sunday's Alpe D'Huez recreation with Joe in the group ride. So that was nice. Miles 10-13 went well for me and I was really pleased. For a brief moment I thought I might just might hold Sean off until the end. But he managed to catch me right around mile 13.3 or so. Damn! So I chased him to the finish as best as I could.
I managed a 47:03 which is exactly three minutes faster than my practice time so that was great! I still think I have a 45:00 in me though so thats the next goal. I love the idea of racing this course all summer long and guaging my improvement.
Sean mentioned that if we train hard on this course that its much hillier and harder than any sprint tri course were likely to ever encounter so speed on this course is going to translate well to any other course. Were also going to start doing brick workouts and doing 5K runs after the TTs as well. So I need to look at and reshuffle my training schedule to accomodate that as I like that idea. I think it will be better to do them on the TT course than on the weekends as I'm more likley to push harder on the bike against the clock than I am by myself in training. Plus it was fun. A good day!
Heres the link to the garmin data...
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