TAG Time Trial (Race Report 4)

Welp, what more can you do but pace yourself correctly, stay aero and hit a new highest average power for 30ish minutes? I didn't win, and I didn't set a new 20km PB, but I can't help but call this a success.

http://www.sooeveningnews.com/article/20130520/NEWS/130529964

My previous best CP20 test yielded a watt average of 294. I haven't been very focused on cycling lately, but I have been doing an all right amount, so I endeavoured to hold 290W for the 20km time trial (higher by 15W over last year's PB, which was at the very end of the season). The weather was a brisk 12 degrees C with a slight wind. The course was more or less flat with one very small hill at the end and a riser over a highway somewhere near the middle.

I rode around the race area for a couple minutes to shake my legs out before anyone else in the area started warming up, but quickly moved onto my trainer. Typical warm up, do a couple race-pace efforts. Chatted with some Sault Cycling Club members, and just generally relaxed. I felt pretty good and ready to hurt.

I started fairly near the back, 1 minute gaps. I made sure to keep warm and did a couple efforts while waiting. I got up the start ramp and POW, off.

I started the first 2 minutes strong to get up to speed and all that. 320W. This brought me to the first corner where I regrouped and got ready to get into a rhythm. The next 9 minutes I held 293W comfortably hard. It was tough but not stinging-hard, and that brought be to the second corner. I chickened out of my aero bars on this corner and surprise, that's where the event photographer was waiting. SPOTTED - out of the aerobars. Oh well. The next 12 minutes featured a tiny riser, and this probably accounted for my 295W average over this section. Only one turn, took it like a boss but no one was where to see it. The last section was headwind and this is where my pace and rhythm started to suffer. However I still managed to crank out the power. I was suffering at this point, but a new batch of "carrots" started appearing in the last 5 minutes which helped keep the motivation high. With about 500m to go I knew I wasn't going to be cracking the course record, or my PB, but I knew I threw down the best TT I could on the day, and was satisfied.

I ended up coming in at 30:33, averaging 293W. Good enough for second place. I was bested by one Tim Best, with a time of 29:24 or something.

I'm happy with this race, and it has provided a good re-test of my cycling zones. I'm starting to feel it's time for a cycling specific period fairly soon. I'm happy where my run is right now, and I'll never be happy with my swim, but I think I can do some good work on my riding. I can't right now, but after my two A-races I think I'll dedicate a month to solid riding. I'll ride like, a billion kms. I'll ride all the kms.

Adam "All the KIMS" Fortais

Bike test (and fit), Run test attempt 2, Return to Sault Ste Marie

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

Base 2 review

This is some serious back-tracking but I thought I may as well document it. Base 2 was from March 4 - March 31 and consisted of mainly long, low intensity work, strength and force-training and the introduction of some longer, higher-effort intervals.

Run weeks focused on very short, hard, steep hill intervals to build up some run-specific leg muscle. The other main focus was to begin increasing the duration of my weekly long-run. This went from 50min to 60min to 75min. The Splash and Dash 1km swim - 10km run race fell on the first week... which wasn't ideal timing wise, but I made sure I didn't over do it. Week two I kept it easy with a 30 minute fartlek run, and I threw in a basic, easy 6km tempo run at 3:50/km in week three.

Bike weeks focused on bike-specific strength training in the form of big gear steady intervals. The weather was still less than great so everything was done on the trainer. A typical workout may include up to 10 minutes of gear-grinding with less than half the interval time recovering, or, getting off the bike to wall sit or squat for a minute or two. Second focus was similar to that of the run weeks, slowly introduce longer, higher effort intervals. Week one was 30 minutes at my "sweet-spot" (80-93% ftp ~ 240W). Week two was 60minute tempo interval (220W) and week three was 3x15minutes (10min tempo (220W), 5 min SS+ (260W))

Swimming was swimming. Just following the UWO tri club's workouts. Hitting about 10km/week in the form of Tues-Thurs morning, 45 minute workouts, and a 2 hour workout on Saturday.

End of month testing went well for cycling, but not so much for swimming. I chalked the poor swim test up to not fully recovering since I hit a new record during the Splash and Dash. The swim test protocol I had been using during base session was 50m invervals on 45seconds to exhaustion, holding whatever pace I want. I picked this since it doesn't take a lot of time, has some amount of specificity, but also focuses on top-end speed which is what I've been trying to increase outside of the competitive season. Last test I managed 10x50m before calling it quits. This month my 10th interval missed the pace time... but again, just like my last post about my most current running test, I did this on a Tuesday after a full training block. From now on, no testing until at least Wednesday.

As I mentioned above, cycling went well. I upgraded my all-time best power over 5 and 20 minutes WHILE ON THE TRAINER... I don't know if anyone else notices this, but hitting your watts on the trainer feels a lot harder than on the road. Physically I don't know how this could be, but it seems to be a real phenomenon. However, I still managed to up to 20 minute critical power to 294W, and my 5 minute critical power to 342W. CP5 was done on a Wednesday, and CP20 was on a Friday. It seems like Wednesday is all right for testing. With this new CP20 value, my estimated FTP (functional threshold power, or, power I can expect to hold for 1 hour) is about 280W. Not bad, not bad.

I decided not to test my running, as the results from Splash and Dash as well as my increasing long runs provided enough feedback to tell me I'm heading in the right direction.

Adam "Catching up on old news" Fortais