Another target ticked!

As ever, I have done a couple of events since the last update. Its been quite a good period of training and no illness of late, I’ve managed to get some solid weeks in and am feeling pretty good.

The Divisional champs were on a decent course for me this year in that the finish wasn’t up a hill, and there weren’t any hills, the weather was bang on and the field was actually pretty reasonable, i.e. not littered with big teams. However after just 1.5 laps of feeling really good, for some unknown reason my Di2 stopped working. Nothing I tried would bring it back to life. I did another 15 miles stuck in the 53-13, which was really quite unpleasant before I called it a day. It ended up being a PedalHeaven team time trial in the end with them taking most of the top 10, and Rob Moore taking a fine solo win, well deserved.

I’ve also got back into some midweek racing, rocked up at Hillingdon a couple of weeks back, again a couple from PH and a few other notable riders made it quite aggressive, I managed to get into the winning move with Rob and Jamie Pine, managed to get 2nd there after feeling really good. I then had something that was a target of mine this year, so it was going to be a bit more of a priority for me…

If you look back then you’ll see a lot of my goals were around certain times on certain courses, naturally I want to do as well in the road racing as I can but its hard to set targets there as its so changeable, I think the best is still to come as I’m feeling like its all coming together fitness wise, just I’ve not done many races this year due to cancellations and weddings and such.

The goal in question was for the 10 mile time trial course at Bentley, H10/8 to those in the know. Its a pretty quick course as they go, I’d have to go pretty badly not to go under 21 mins on here, and indeed the idea for this year was for me to break 19.30 on there, my previous best last summer was 20.02, but with me managing 20.13 in the cold of December I was pretty confident I was going to get that 19 this year to join a fairly small group of riders who’ve also done it.

Sub 19.30 on the other hand was something that very few people have done, 3 I think and they’re all pros, and one of those is Alex Dowsett. (Hutch and Russ Hampton being the others). So its fair to say it was a fairly punchy target, and to beat my best on there by 30 secs minimum is not a cake walk. Anyway, the day in question was Saturday gone, I came into the weekend after that crit 2nd place, and riding fairly steady the rest of the week, I knew my legs were going to be good, not sure how, just knew.

I was warming up on the turbo and some days you just know, I had a day like that at the Kingston event, when you’re turning over on the turbo at 280-300w and it’s barely even registering, its a good sign, I did my usual warmup and made my way over to the start. Today was a good wind, gentle tailwind out and slight head on the way back but it being downhill towards the end it wouldn’t be too bad. There were of course other riders too, John Dewey who has run me close in every event I’ve done with him this year, Liam Maybank who also has been consistently there also then others such as Nick English who did almost same time as me at the nationals, and then a fairly unknown quantity in James Boyman, I say unknown as he was returning to the sport after time out, but I’d seen he was winning most events he was entering, including the Tour of the Milburys 2 stage race, which I also won a couple of years ago.

Anyway, I got up to the line and set off steadily, the plan was to stick to a sensible number on the way out, 370 ish, and then begin to open it up on the way back where I’d not have a helpful tailwind. I got to the turn at just over 370w and an average of around 31.6 mph, it was looking good. I got round the turn ok and overtook another rider, I think I overtook around 4 riders! I began to empty myself and I noticed annoyingly that I wasn’t able to use the 11t, there were times I wanted it. I approached the finish and did the usual calculation, I had exactly 1 mile left to go, was riding around 30 mph and was only just over 17 mins or so, I thought for a minute an 18 was on the cards…

However, I crossed the line in 19.13 having dragged the average watts up to around 385 which is as good as I’ve managed in a ten, which bodes well given I’ve not ridden the TT bike in two months! Hopefully I can really do a ride at the big events this year. I knew that time would be pretty difficult to beat, and indeed only 2 others have done faster on there, Alex Dowsett and Hutch, and I wasn’t far from Hutch’s time really, I was really happy to be honest. I got back to the HQ and there was many of those awkward conversations where you talk about everything BUT the only bit of info you care about, the time, however the organiser eventually put the last two times in, mine and Boyman, I thought he had delayed it as we had done the same time for a minute, but no, he had managed a very impressive 19.38 for second place, Dewey, and Herbert also managed to scrape under 20 mins.

Felt pretty happy with the ride, but then that part of me that always wants better came out and I decided I would now need to do an 18 on there! Going to still make it to some midweek crits, got a few TT events, a holiday, and various other bits coming up, so hopefully I’ll get some results worth talking about for the next entry.

If you have a copy of cycling weekly from the last week or two you’ll now see I’m 3rd fastest over 10 miles so far this year, just behind some random called Bradley (though my time was miles from his of course!).

https://app.strava.com/activities/310110712/overview