Severn Road Club U17 25m TT – 22nd February

So I will be honest… I had never even thought about doing a 25m TT this year... not at least until Matt said he was going to attempt to get under the hour this year. I’m not saying I have adopted his goal… little bit ambitious for me... I just thought I would give it a shot and get some experience.

The winter training of long miles had left me with no mental strength to really push myself. I was used to taking it easy for the last few months… I needed to change that. It was the beginning of February that I started some more specific interval training. I had signed up to Strava Premium and they had just released some interesting 4 week training plans suited to where you want to improve and how much time you have available. This suits me perfectly.

I chose the training plan that will increase my performance over a 3 min segment/climb. You may be thinking, why on earth would you want to improve over 3 minutes when you’re going to take over an hour to complete a 25 miles TT! I needed to feel the burn… feel the pain in my legs… I needed my mind to overcome the want to stop… there is no giving up when your racing. I chose this training plan to change my state of mind. I knew 4 weeks would never be enough time to improve my muscular strength… but I could make big improvements in my mental strength… I was weak!

A mixture of VO2 Max, Power and Tempo Intervals over the next 4 weeks really did the trick… I felt like I was back in the game… But I had never completed a 25 mile effort before. Especially not on a TT bike in race conditions! The weekend before the race I created a course locally to total 25 miles and gave it a test run… I needed a rough heart rate and average speed to aim for. Luckily the Strava training plan had already worked out my Functional Threshold Power (FTP) which gave me a good target to work too. The wind was pretty still that day and the weather was dry… not bad for February. Race day was the opposite!

The wind and rain was due to pick up about 11am… I set off at 11am. Great timing! Tail wind on the way out… head wind on the way back. I was second to last (one in front of Billy Oliver) and with some rough calculations before the race I had come to the conclusion that Billy would pass about 1 min and 1 second after I go off and I would be the last to finish… great. I was really looking forward to this one!

Luckily I had managed to complete the warm-up in the dry. I was down by the start line when the rain and wind started. Setting off with the wind behind me I felt good… learning from the mistake I made last year on the U7b with a tailwind on the outward leg I knew I had to take it easy. I was watching others returning… just missing the rain and wind… I couldn’t have drawn a shorter straw! I was surprised when Billy hadn’t passed by the time I got to the turn off from the A38 to complete two laps of the Wanswell circuit. Perhaps I was pushing a bit too hard I thought to myself… Before I knew it I was entering the corner. I had never taken then corner before… certainly not on a TT bike. It was sharp… I was still in the Tri bars… somehow I manage to grab the brakes just as the back end jumped out and I entered the other side of the road… with one foot out I just about managed to stabilise myself. With that, Billy passed… all I could think was… “I nearly took out the favorite”… that would have been embarrassing!

The two laps of Wanswell were a bit of a drag. There are a few roundabouts and junctions to contend with along with a few lumps and a painful drag out of Berkeley and up the A38. This kept putting my heart rate well above my FTP target. I was glad when the last lap was over. I had a decent tail wind out to Slimbridge which gave me time to recover before the dreaded battle back to the start. The headwind was brutal. It was just a case of head down steady effort all the way home. By Berkeley I was really feeling it. By Newport Towers I had blown. I was just attempting to hold on now. Keep the legs spinning. It was like a ghost town when I got to the end. The time keeper was sat in a VW T4 on the side of the road. A little finish flag sticking out of the grass. The layby on the right (that was full of athletes warming up earlier in the day) was now empty. I pulled over… nearly threw up… turned around and cycled back to the van. Took me nearly an hour to get changed. As soon as I stopped I started getting cold. By the time I got into the van it was as though my body had shut down. Somehow I managed to get into some dry clothes and back to HQ as the presentations were being made. Checking out my time of 1:06:36 I was really pleased. Given the weather conditions and my inexperience, I’m not sure I could have done any better.

Big thanks to everyone that shouted me on that day… the cheers definitely kept me going.

I loved the 25 mile TT… as soon as I got home, I signed up for the next one :D

https://www.strava.com/activities/258330877