On Saturday the plan was to do around 60 km by first helping out at the junior race and then racing the senior time trial in the afternoon. So at 12 o'clock I went down and we rode 10 km out along Plunkets road as a group and then split up into smaller groups to race back in. The group I was coaching/ helping was to ride to the 'palm trees' which are two random palm trees on the side of the road. The group of three riders were working together well until the turn around. Coming up to the turn around I went to the front for two reasons, the first was so I could ride past each rider and let them know where we were turning around and secondly so I could control the speed so they didn't go too fast and crash.
Even though we were going really slow and everyone new where we were turning one kid still managed to crash. For some unknown reason he didn't brake as hard as everyone else and ran into the rider in front of him. This meant that even though he crashed we were going so slow he didn't get hurt and got up straight away. No one else came off but the person he ran into's bike was a bit worse for wear. The derailleur hanger bent and a few spokes on the wheel snapped. The good thing was that no one was hurt so all we had to do was call someone to pick up the kid with the broken bike and then ride back.
When we got back to the start I waited for Dad to bring down my time trial bike and rollers so I could start my warm up for the 18 km senior time trial. Usually for a club race I wouldn't bother warming up because a club time trial isn't serious enough but I decided to test the warm up I saw in one of the Greenedge videos on youtube. I was also testing a new time trial helmet and racing my time trial bike for the second time (the other time was at Wangaratta).
Usually the start to a time trial is boring but this was different. The rider who was to start before me (you start at 1 minute intervals) missed his start time and only realised that he was 20 seconds late when the starter started frantically waving his hands for him to hurry up and get to the start. After watching the worst ever start to a time trial I tried to do it a bit better. The aim was to get up to speed quickly and the get my heart rate up where I wanted it to be which is between 88% and 90% of my maximum heart rate. This heart rate is a bit higher than what I would usually try and hold in a time trial but most of the time I have too much energy left by the finish so I wanted to try and push myself a bit harder than usual. I managed to do this well until I went over Billies hill which was 12 km into the race. Normally in a time trial I start to lose focus on the downhill bit of the course because you go faster down the hill and then I sort of forget to keep pushing hard. But this time it was different I saw two riders in the distance and decided to try and catch them before the finish. The first riders was easy to catch as he had gone too hard on the uphill part of the course and didn't have any energy left. The second rider was not so easy though, he had started the race 2 minutes ahead of me and by the time I got to the top of the hill he was about 500-700 meters in front of me (I'm not too good at judging distance). Even though by the end of the race I didn't catch him I was not very far off which was good for my overal time because it allowed me to push myself harder trying to catch him.
Even though we were going really slow and everyone new where we were turning one kid still managed to crash. For some unknown reason he didn't brake as hard as everyone else and ran into the rider in front of him. This meant that even though he crashed we were going so slow he didn't get hurt and got up straight away. No one else came off but the person he ran into's bike was a bit worse for wear. The derailleur hanger bent and a few spokes on the wheel snapped. The good thing was that no one was hurt so all we had to do was call someone to pick up the kid with the broken bike and then ride back.
When we got back to the start I waited for Dad to bring down my time trial bike and rollers so I could start my warm up for the 18 km senior time trial. Usually for a club race I wouldn't bother warming up because a club time trial isn't serious enough but I decided to test the warm up I saw in one of the Greenedge videos on youtube. I was also testing a new time trial helmet and racing my time trial bike for the second time (the other time was at Wangaratta).
Usually the start to a time trial is boring but this was different. The rider who was to start before me (you start at 1 minute intervals) missed his start time and only realised that he was 20 seconds late when the starter started frantically waving his hands for him to hurry up and get to the start. After watching the worst ever start to a time trial I tried to do it a bit better. The aim was to get up to speed quickly and the get my heart rate up where I wanted it to be which is between 88% and 90% of my maximum heart rate. This heart rate is a bit higher than what I would usually try and hold in a time trial but most of the time I have too much energy left by the finish so I wanted to try and push myself a bit harder than usual. I managed to do this well until I went over Billies hill which was 12 km into the race. Normally in a time trial I start to lose focus on the downhill bit of the course because you go faster down the hill and then I sort of forget to keep pushing hard. But this time it was different I saw two riders in the distance and decided to try and catch them before the finish. The first riders was easy to catch as he had gone too hard on the uphill part of the course and didn't have any energy left. The second rider was not so easy though, he had started the race 2 minutes ahead of me and by the time I got to the top of the hill he was about 500-700 meters in front of me (I'm not too good at judging distance). Even though by the end of the race I didn't catch him I was not very far off which was good for my overal time because it allowed me to push myself harder trying to catch him.
The blue line represents HR. Compared to previous time trials it has a lot less dips in it which means I didn't lose concentration and slow down as much.
My time was 27:09 which is an average speed of 40.2 kph. I was happy with that because one of my friends who usually beats me was trying to average 40 kph and I though I would get no where near it.
Full Results: http://www.alburywodongacycling.com/home/2013/5/25/itt-fun-times.htmlGPS link: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1347724
On Sunday I had to ride around 100 km which takes around 3-4 hours depending on how hilly the ride is. 3-4 hours of riding a bike by myself sounded a bit boring and the people I ride with most of the time were away racing in Ararat. So I decide to see if two of my friends I hadn't ridden with in a while wanted to go for a ride. They both wanted to go for a ride so the plan was to meet in Albury at 10 am then ride a lap around Bellbridge. When I left it was 8 ºC and the most it got to was 12 ºC so it was a good opportunity to try my new jacket and gloves which were very good, the jacket was perfect the whole way and the glove were a little cold at the start but good after I warmed up a bit.
Full Results: http://www.alburywodongacycling.com/home/2013/5/25/itt-fun-times.htmlGPS link: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1347724
On Sunday I had to ride around 100 km which takes around 3-4 hours depending on how hilly the ride is. 3-4 hours of riding a bike by myself sounded a bit boring and the people I ride with most of the time were away racing in Ararat. So I decide to see if two of my friends I hadn't ridden with in a while wanted to go for a ride. They both wanted to go for a ride so the plan was to meet in Albury at 10 am then ride a lap around Bellbridge. When I left it was 8 ºC and the most it got to was 12 ºC so it was a good opportunity to try my new jacket and gloves which were very good, the jacket was perfect the whole way and the glove were a little cold at the start but good after I warmed up a bit.
The new Pearl Izumi Jacket
| 
The new BBB gloves
|
When I got to where we were meeting there was a problem. There was only one person when there was meant to be two, one rider got out of bed a bit late and didn't have his bike ready so told us to go on without him. He didn't miss much in the terms of good views though, all we could see was fog the whole way. After doing the lap around Bellbridge we headed back into Albury to get a coffe/ milkshake (I had the milkshake, coffee is disgusting!). After the drinks we decided we weren't quite satisfied so we ordered some banana bread the looked pretty good. After 15 minutes of waiting we went in to see what was happening, the lady serving said it would be ready soon so we went and sat down again. The worst bit about this was that as we sat down we saw her put it in the toaster/ grill thing and then she brought it out 5 minutes later. It took 20 minutes to toast a bit of bread. 20 minutes. Some times being a cyclist is hard, especially when after I finished the bread I rode home and saw that there was a place just down the road that had an open fire place.
GPS link: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1350835
GPS link: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1350835
The ride ended up being 99.4 km. The red line is where we went
RSS Feed