As alluded to before, I gave myself some time to recover and set out to test my 5km speed again. I did this yesterday in Sault Ste Marie, around my neighbourhood with my dad biking along side for fun. And it was fun. I went out conservatively, knowing what happened last time. My km splits were 3:25 - 3:21 - 3:20 - 3:20 - 3:11. So two things to glean - super negative splitting... to the point of definitely not hitting the fastest time possible, but also a new PB (16:37). I compared my heart rate data from both days and the story was drastically different. The first attempt had me crawling up to about 190bmp by 7 minutes, then sitting above 192bpm, crawling into 203bpm. I held 6 minutes above 195bpm before blowing up, at about 13 minutes. Yesterday I peaked at about 192bpm around the last km, but held it in the middle 180's for the majority of the run. Perfect. This means I will be updating my training paces a little bit, and I'm starting to figure out quantitatively when to start backing off. Crossing into 192bpm is certainly the redzone.
Insert comical transition. Pause for laughter.
I got a bike fit at Multisport Zone in London on Thursday. My fit seemed... all right I guess, but I knew I could push the saddle forward and I wasn't sure about saddle height. It wasn't uncomfortable per se, but it wasn't great. And I knew I could get a little more aero. So off I went to meet Jeff. Short story even shorter, My seatpost angle was adjusted from 75 degrees to a proper, agressive 78 degrees, my saddle height was lifted by almost 3 inches (!!!!) and I received recommendations to move my armrests back. The armrests were as far back as the two-bold design would allow for, but I have since eschewed the second bolt to try out the waay further back position. Updates on that to follow. The fit feels a lot better, though during testing I was still sucked into riding on the nose of the saddle, likely due to the arm rests being too far up. I attempted my outdoor 30 minute TT but was held up by way too many lights to have a reliable test. Around 90 seconds of waiting for lights, etc... but still received a graded normalized power of 290 watts but actually averaged 280 watts, covering about 19.2km in those 30 minutes. Not bad, but it doesn't really tell me much. I just know it's pretty good. If all goes well I will be racing a 20km TT next weekend in Sault Michigan so I will get a definitive number then.
I'll try and get a picture of my new position for interest-sake and critical purposes.
Speaking of Sault Ste Marie, guess where I am! Sault "covered in snow, no really, it's been blizzarding for 20 hours" Ste Marie. I will be back home working at Essar Steel, in the mill, all summer for good money. But I really don't want to work at all. I'll just have to suck it up though. These race fees ain't gunna pay themselves. Hopefully I'll get a good pile of time off or something and manage to get back to London a couple times.
That's enough for now I think.
Adam "That's enough for now" Fortais
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