"Tuesday Night Time Trial" to Get Ready for This Weekend

The title says it all. I figured it be nice to get in some quick speed before my showdown at the Trinona Time Trial on Saturday night. I've done 4 "TNTs" in the past on their 11 mile out-and-back course. But this year, they have a NEW 13 mile loop:

Here's a link to the interactive version of that map.

It's clockwise starting and ending at the SW corner, and the final few miles is on the road that used to be part of the out-and-back 11 mile course.

I got my bike cleaned up for the first time in about 11 months, tweeted this pic, and hit the road for the race:

Grandma (my Mom) with Charlie as I took off.


In line to get my number.


That purple and yellow scrap looks familiar. It's from Chamois Butt'r!
Someone has a sore bottom!
(Also, that's not my pee.)

Brother-in-law Matt showed up after a ride, but he wasn't going to do the TT. He rode north with me to the first corner so we could check out a bit of the new course.

The first turn is just up by the high line pole on the right. Also, I don't know how many
photos I have of Matt's ass. They're all for sale if anyone wants to buy them. Cheap.

I'm glad we checked out that first turn - it was one of the nastier ones out there. There were a lot of potholes. (The final turn of the TT back onto Hwy 24 with 2-3 miles left was the other nasty turn - it's a sharp turn onto a busy road, and they smartly put up cones to keep us contained/safe.) Then we got back to watch the TT start:

Lined up, with people starting on the left every 30 seconds.


Me lined up in the middle.


Being held for my start.


Just 1 second after being released.




Building speed.

Off I went. I powered up the first 2 hills. I decided I'd work on pushing up and over the top of the hills, and I wouldn't try to kill it too hard on the way down - I have the "all uphill" Trinona Time Trial coming up this weekend, so there's no use working on building downhill speed.

I set my Garmin to take splits every mile. I'd never done that before on the bike. I did some math and figured that 22 mph is 2:43/mile, and 23 mph is 2:36/mile. I was hoping to have my average overall speed be somewhere in there, but I didn't know what to expect on this new (and longer) TT course.

• Mile 3.25 (1/4 done): overall average of 22.5 mph. I was happy with that. More hills to come.

• Mile 6.5 (1/2 done): overall average of 22.0 mph. I pushed that back up to 22.4 before hitting some more hills and lowering it to...

• Mile 9.75 (3/4 done): overall average of 21.9 mph. Time to raise this average back up. Honestly, from around mile 7 through around mile 11, I could have "attacked" a bit more. I think I was a little timid on the hills. Damn it.

• Finish: overall average of 22.2 mph.

Here were my mile splits on my Garmin: 2:35.2, 2:43.2, 2:54.1, 2:39.4, 2:47.9, 2:26.3, 2:42.2, 2:48.3, 2:31.6, 3:02.4, 2:38.0, 2:53.4, and 2:24.1.

Even though my Garmin said 35:10, my official results were 35:26. (Sure, my Garmin is not "official," but I'm not sure how/why they are 16 seconds apart.) UPDATE: it's now officially listed as 35:11.

OFFICIAL RESULTS:

35:11.490
22.16 mph (based on 13.0 miles)
12 out of 15 in the 30-39 age group
42 out of 55 in the "open male" class
54 out of 81 overall

3 FINAL NOTES:

- I need to push more 3/4 into the ride. That's where I'm weakest in about every race.

- My 4 other TT results were 23.01, 22.77, 22.65, and 22.54 mph. So this one is my slowest. Dang.

- This new route felt a lot hiller than the old one. But when I compared my Garmin elevation info from the old course to the new course, I actually found that there was less elevation change in the new course! But the elevation charts show why it felt so hilly/difficult. Here's the old course (in red) laid on top of the new course (in green):

The old course (red) has fewer but longer hills, whereas the
new course (green) has a lot more quick up-and-downs!


My speed, just for the hell of it.

I drove back home while watching the sun set behind downtown Mpls:

That's new Viking's stadium construction on the far right.

Oh, I forgot to mention I got hit by a big ass bug right in my eye around mile 2. When I got home I noticed I still had a chunk of that big fella in there:

To the far right. And partly under my lid. Gross.

Well, time to rest up for the Trinona Time Trial this weekend! (HERE'S where I announced the showdown at Trinona against the race director, and HERE'S his lie-filled response.)

Make sure to keep an eye on my twitter and my instagram over the weekend as I'll be posting from Trinona. It's time for 2 races this weekend!!