I did the Orange County Speedway Time Trial on May 13, 2008. This is an 8 mile cycling time trial done on a car race track. Finish Strong is the company that runs these monthly trials, and they do a superb job. It’s fun and casual environment and a great way to gauge your cycling fitness over time. If you live in this area, I highly recommend doing this race. They do it every 2nd tuesday of the month, in season.
My time was 22:28.1, which is a whopping 1 second faster than the last time I did this race – HAHAHA! My plan was to go all out the entire time to use this as a heart rate test.
HR stats: 169 average, 173 max.
My legs felt dead as soon as I started riding. Not only did I do a race 10 days ago, but since then have done a 9 mile run, a hard hilly bike ride, and a hard hilly run. I wanted to average 22 mph on this course, but each time I looked at my speedometer, I saw 21.something (just like a white lake). I kept trying to push harder and feel more burning. At the half way point I was ready to call it quits, but kept pushing hard anyway, if only for the heart rate test. I felt like I was getting as much out of my legs and lungs as I possibly could, so I started thinking “What can I do to get free speed?”. I thought of hunkering down into a tighter aero position, and holding my line (riding as straight as possible). It was a good mental exercise.
I took a video of the race and posted it on youtube. Here’s a 30 second clip, shown below. You can see me starting out up at the top of the track. Then I speed by once. Then you see me ride by in slow motion. I also posted longer clips: Clip 1 & Clip #2.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sDyHRHnviM]
Scott and Rebecca Dewire, a 30 year old husband and wife team that I know from a tri club, were also racing. They are both amazingly fast triathletes. They have a brand new baby, so they took turns: one watched the baby while the other raced. Rebecca was on the course at the same time as me, but I thought it was Scott. They wore the same helmet and outfit, so you can’t really tell who is who flying by. Rebecca flew past me at least three times. Each time, I thought “I can’t expect to keep up with a 30 year old male”. After the race, I realized it was Rebecca flying past me. I guess I can’t expect to keep up with the Dewires, period!!!
When Scott was done with the race, he was in so much pain that he could hardly dismount his bike. Granted, he had done the White Lake 1/2 race 10 days ago, not the Sprint like I did. Still, it made me think that perhaps there is a level of physical effort that I have not yet tapped into. My coach talks about really painful workouts. I feel some pain and burning in my muscles during hard workouts, but it is really more on the UNCOMFORTABLE scale, not REAL TRUE Pain that makes me limp afterwards. Something to think about.
I photoshopped myself alongside the Dewires to compare my aero position. I am going to fiddle with my stem and spacers to see if I can get a little lower in the front. BTW, studies show that those funky aero helmets take over a minute off a 40k race (olympic tri). That’s going to be my next purchase.
Scott’s blog: http://scottdewire.blogspot.com/
Rebecca’s blog: http://rebeccadewire.blogspot.com/
Good information–thanks.