Winter training ride

Enjoyed a very chilly ride with Rolly on Saturday and I have come to the realization that riding outdoors in any form of dry weather is better than riding the trainer.
Rest of the team was in a clinic but I wanted miles so opt'd out.

Rode the North end of Lake Washington and its been several months since I have been on the upper lake. The full lake route would make a great winter base ride. Kind of funny how I find myself wanting to create some new, obscure training route when the lake route has some great stuff. Great coffee shops, not much traffic in the winter, great scenery, no drive time. Have to do the full lake next weekend.

Now if I could just find some trainer love

2009 Frostbite TT

Ushering in a new year the first event is the Frostbite Time trial in Everett. Flat, 9 miles along a river road, weather was rainy but not dramatic.

CycleU had a ballpark of 10 team members there and several people from the friday night race training whether from CycleU or others (date conflict with Chilly Hilly didn't help). Thanks to Lang for getting a great tent spot right in front of the start line. Made for easy prep based for ones start time and nice watching everyone take off from the line.

This was my first ITT but I think the friday nights at CycleU were a major help! Pacing/time/distance from the indoor course to this course was pretty similar. There was still some guess work for me but I can typically hold around 272 watts on friday nights with a standard road setup (shorter course). I tried my TT setup one night and averaged a little over 250 but I seemed to be really fighting the machine .... so some question about what I should target as an average wattage (plus just came off a break and posted better wattage last thursday than normal).
End result, I think I went as good as could be expected. In a do-over I think I could have gone a little harder on the first half (it was uphill) and suffered it in to the finish with the same 2nd half effort. I think I will also try to lower my clip-on bars/stem even moreso; I have about 1/4" of spacer left and I will try to drop to see if I can get more aero without losing too many watts. The flat course made tapering out the power pretty easy and I thought the event was run nicely:

overall
time 24:29 (unofficially from my PT interval)
avg power 273 watts
speed 22.6 mph

1st half
time 13:15 'ish
avg power 276 watts
speed 21.0 mph

2nd half (downhill, lite wind aid)
time 11:15'ish
avg power 269 watts
speed 24.4 mph

I am no gift to TT's but had a great time and look forward to Icebreaker. Parting thoughts:

Even though I thought I had packed perfectly the night before it was still pretty hectic getting dressed with no chair. I could have also used some more water and stretched better. I switched out my trainer skewer while TT prepping my road bike which made no sense when I got there to warm-up

I now know the difference in sound between Adrian passing me and a 747 at lift-off. Adrian makes a whew,whew,whew noise and is somewhat more quiet. When you read the start sheet and see Adrian a minute behind you and some other really fit tri guy posing as a Cat 4/5 ... know you will be passed by some folks. Some will pass you in the first km :)

Nice work by Alex T (former content provider here), and Coach Adrian and Lang!