TT racing this month

As I write this my DVD recorder is playing last night's day 1 of the Tour de France, this is such a great time of the year, guaranteed TV candy unlike most of the rest of the year...however..not for me staying up over night to see it live. My only sadness is that due to travelling I'll miss a day or so late in the race. A special request will have to be sent up to the plane's captain to ask for regular updates.

Today's 22km TT race at the Boulie was a 2 lap race. The blurb says A grade ride 2 laps, everyone else 1 lap. My coach however has told me to race 2 laps, so I race A grade!

The Boulie is a hilly/undulating course with a crap road surface, and since I struggle to TT at a decent speed on hills 100m or longer I anticipated I would struggle today and I did. This link is its to show the elevation...(we actually start at the Walmer street end and turn around where they've put the start)......the hills at either end of the course were the ones to bite me in the bum and since it was 2 laps.........at 4% they're not steep in anyone's language, but in TT's I seem to struggle more with hills than in a road race.

The start was a bit chaotic; the turn up was much bigger than expected and so the start was delayed, then the order seemed to be wrong when it turned out I was I was 4th rider off despite the fact that the juniors were s'posed to be ahead of me. I just managed to struggle out of my jacket and leg warmers in time but was in small chain ring and had the wrong display up on the cyclocomputer..doh! I was followed by A grade men and so was being overtaken, especially on the uphills, by speed machines which made me feel like I was going backwards!

3rd (prob out of 3!) in A grade women in ~38 mins and some, my first lap was faster than the winners in Masters Women and B grade Women. The winner in A grade Women (a real A grader) won in ~36 mins...hey! 2 mins slower over 22km to a classy young rider..hmmm ...can't complain. My HR was where it should be, watts were on target..speed not quite. Polar read out below showing HR and altitude only.



Next Saturday (12/7) I'll be racing the 1st leg only of a 2 day tour..luckily the 22km ITT is the first race. It is out at Lang Lang (interesting colour problem on bikely.com ....prediction of the "every other year" instead of every 25 year drought we are to expect?) and is described as flat except for .........(!).












The following Saturday I'll be at Yarra Junction for a really hilly 25km TT...last time I raced this it took me ages to recover but this year I'm fitter and less stressed. Its an out and back course....the graph below shows the outward leg only.


Go Cadel! Go Trent!