It's been over a week since I set a lifelong accomplishment and it's way past due for me to write about it.... but the fact is I didn't have a very good day so it does not feel like such a great thing.
I've had a long standing goal of doing a 40 kilometer (24.8 mile) time trial in under an hour. Maintaining 24.8+ mph for an hour is not easy. I've tried several times, with my previous best was in 2011 at 1:02:50.
The New Jersey State Time Trial Championships was held last weekend. It's a gently rolling course that is more downhill on the way our and more uphill on the way back, but it's not that much of a climb really. The biggest challenges came from the weather: 85 degree heat and 15 mph gusting crosswinds that did nothing to make the heat feel any better. They just made it dramatically harder to ride in a straight line.
It was so warm before the race that I had a hard time warming up. I had my trainer set up in the shade and the winds were not enough to even remotely help me keep cool. It got me thinking about things I've seen other riders do, like wearing ice vests as they warm up and maybe finding some way to run a fan off my car. It was brutal.
I rolled up to the start pouring sweat, but not really feeling like my legs and lungs were warmed up enough to race. The long sleeved speed suit and aero helmet with very few vents did not help.
At the start, the guy behind me was giving me grief about having two water bottles on my bike. He kept telling me that I should throw one away and that it would not get me anything in a race like this. I resisted the urge to tell him to mind his own business and an even stronger urge to challenge him to beat me if he thought they were such a detriment to me. Over the course of the race I drank both bottles... and beat that guy by almost 3 minutes.
Mentally, I try to break races into quarters. For a race this length, I did them in 15-minute quarters for easier math on the road.
The first 15 minutes were both the best and the worst. It was the best in the sense that it's the only time during the entire race that I was putting out the kind of power I wanted, about 255 watts. It was the worst in the sense that I felt so awful that I was not sure I'd even finish the race. There was no shade, I was constantly fighting with the winds for control of the bike, and my heart rate was sky high. I was trying to drink only every 15 minutes, but it was so hot that I drank three times in the first 15 minutes. I was not even thinking about pacing my intake so the drinks lasted me the whole hour. I was just drinking all I wanted.
In the second 15 minutes, my power dropped a lot, only averaging about 225. I was still fighting the winds, but dropping my power made me feel a lot better. I was not longer worried about heat stroke and just tried to keep on going. The course curved slightly, putting the winds more at my back... which was only good until I turned around and headed back into them. I hit the turnaround pretty smoothly at 30:32.... not terrible really. I figured that if I could hold the same pace on the way back, I'd finish around 1:01:00 or so, which was still way faster than my previous best. At the turnaround, I was already starting my second bottle.
The third quarter was just hell. My heart rate was back up again and the course was both slightly uphill and into the wind. I still kept my power around 225. I tried keeping my head down as low as I could to cut down my wind resistance all that I could. The winds did not feel as bad as I'd expected. In fact, they seemed to be helping me now. On the way back there was a little more shade, which made it a little more tolerable.
The last 15 minutes was just beyond description. My legs were sore, which I couldn't explain since I was way below my target power. My hips and back were not used to being in this position for so long and were really aching. With about 10 minutes to go, I drank the last of my second bottle. But I had a suspicion... The winds were helping me a lot more than I'd expected. I saw the 1K to go sign at about 58 minutes. As awful as I felt, I knew that I had only about a minute and a half to go and that I would almost certainly reach my goal.
I hit the line at 59:35, immediately switched to a lighter gear, sat up, and unzipped my suit. I pedaled softly for several minutes until I caught my breath. I never really stopped pouring sweat until I'd been back in the car with the air conditioning on for a really long time.
I reached the goal... but it felt a bit hollow. Going into the race, I had expected to hold about 250 to 260 watts for the race. I only averaged 237. My whole season has been focused on hitting a target power for a set duration. To me, missing my target power (even with the heat) was a huge failure. It means that if I had been able to cope with the heat, I would have been a lot faster.
I also look at my new equipment. With the new bike and the rented disc wheel, I am inherently faster than I was before. It's true that the new gear leveled the playing field with the competition, but in comparison to my own goals, I really wanted to break an hour by more than just a few seconds to really feel like it was me that did it and not the bike.
It's a couple more weeks until my next 40K and I am working on being ready for the heat and a much better time.
