“Just go as fast as you can… and no faster!”

Well, been waiting a while to say this but….

  ...that was perfect. I mean everything was spot on!

  I felt fresh and strong, felt awesome warming up, paced it more or less spot on, bike felt good and it worked flawlessly…

  It didn't rain in the end, but it was indeed windy. Some quick rides from the big boys though although my 21:54 was within a minute of the top 3 so I certainly didn't embarrass myself. Got very close several local fastmen who are usually considerably faster than me in fact. Very pleasing.

Hmmmm... those bars still aren't right. Thanks again to Gail for the great pic.

  Unfortunately, it felt just about as fast as I can go at the minute – nothing clouding the performance this time, no excuses. However, I now know how I should feel so that’s something! I finally seem to have regained all my health too – thought that’d never happen.

  As suspected, I’ve now moved from over-doing the training to doing too little I think. I’m officially ‘over-rested’, although it’s a much better place to be than ‘over-trained’ without a doubt. Now, I’m no Peter Keen but riding one ‘10’ a week and 5 mins each way to work for the last couple of weeks surely isn’t enough.

  Somewhere between my two extreme states is a magic spot. The trick now is to find it…

  Not sure that psychologically or logistically I can manage two TT’s a week so I might just try chucking in one hard session a week for a while and see how that goes. Next Open is Thursday evening so I’ll try a really hard 2-3 hour smash on Saturday morning before work and then rest up again & see what happens. My big targets are still over a month away so still time to tweak things a little.

  Actually, probably not true to describe the ride as ‘perfect’. My starts are always deliberately steady but it took 36 seconds for me to roll up to TT speed after the start (yes, I was sad enough to clock it!). This, combined with a jokey comment from a mate afterwards about how he thought there was ‘something wrong with your gears or something’ when I set off has made me think about this. If I get bored later, I’ll try and work out how much time a more explosive start would save and whether it’s worth it.

  Funny though innit? I’ve had a couple of younger riders who have never raced before ask me for advice recently (I know – me!!!  Ha ha ha…). One was a young lad out with his dad, the other a family member about to embark on his first TT as part of a Triathlon relay team.

  All I could think to say to them was:

  “Just go as fast as you can… and no faster!”

  They probably thought I was taking the piss or spouting some existentialist bollocks but to me it’s the essence of being a hobby time-trialist, although I’d never really said it out loud before.  As a TT mantra, it’s not a bad one to have actually and it came into my head a couple of times when the gradient and/or wind hacked the speed right down.

  It’s quite healthy for me to have the knowledge about how fast I CAN go – I was probably close to my genetic limit in the mid 90’s and that’s how fast I can go… and no faster. I’ll never be able to do 19 minute 10’s  or 49 minute 25’s and I know that. A mid 20 minute 10 is about my limit on a perfect day on a perfect course I reckon..... although not yet!

  Think it's about time I finished off the MKIII disc wheel and strap that on....