I should really just call this a "Data File" since there's not a lot of actual Power in this ride. Green at the top is power output. You can see I charged hard up the first hill, which of course was a mistake. All season long I've been able to recover really well from efforts so I thought if I could crest this rise quickly I'd settle into my rhythm on the back, catch my breath a bit, and keep at it. But I didn't calculate the fatigue in my legs from the previous day's 102 degree road race (and of course all the advice on negative splits from professionals and coaches who make a living giving advice about how to race TTs). My snap was snipped and I labored through this whole thing, never really feeling fast. You'll see some power spikes throughout. These are at the top of hills where I would stand on it to try to bring my speed back up. And there's another rise at the end when I saw the finish line, which came up about 3 minutes earlier than I expected from the shortened course.
Split times were 13:35 and 11:08. Greg Wittwer was my 30-second man and he finished 2nd with about 23:15. He said he was 13 flat at the turnaround. He disappeared from my view pretty quickly. I had given up 35 seconds already, and then gave up another 48 on the backside to finish about a minute and a half adrift at 24:43. I did 327 watts on the way out, 305 coming back.
The good news is that I didn't leave much on the course. The disappointment is that a little better race strategery and experience would probably have been worth 30 seconds.
Strangely, I do think I genuinely like time trials, and it's not just because I get to wear a pointy helmet and sexy pants. I wouldn't be altogether surprised if I did another one before next year's ToWC.
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