Minutes and Millimeters

I completed my first official club time trial of the year last night. There was a stiff, cool breeze, providing a nasty headwind and sidewind on the way out to the turnaround, and a sidewind and tailwind on the way back. I had left the disc wheel at home and instead rode the PowerTap wheel. I wanted a measurement of my time trial power under race conditions.

Time trials are terrible, terrible things. You have to ride on the razor's edge, ever vigilant about putting power to the pedals and suffering like a dog. The air was dry last night too, which meant I was in for a big case of hacking and coughing after the finish line.

By the end of the ten miles, the clock read 24:16, a little over a minute worse than my best-ever time. That's not terrible for this time of the year, especially considering I was lacking my disc wheel and it was quite windy, but it's not great either.

The race was good, though, at providing some education about power and position. I had been trying to get my position right on the trainer at home and on the road a bit a couple weeks ago. It's not until you go through the stress of a live time trial, dropping the hammer for over 20 minutes, that problems with position show their true colors.

From about mile two on, I had the sensation that my saddle was too low, and I found myself frequently trying to push myself rearward on the saddle. At the finish, my knees were aching a bit and my average power for the effort had been only 278 watts. I managed an average of 282 watts in an hour on my road bike on the rollers in dark, cold February, and my power analysis software tells me that my best 20 minutes so far this season was an average of 298 watts (on a climb in Asheville three weeks ago), so I must say that 278 in 24 minutes was a bit disappointing, but I'm taking it as a challenge to improve my position and train more on the TT bike.

I will be getting out the measuring tape, plumb bobs, and protractors and doing full measurements studying my road bike and comparing it with my TT bike. I'll probably be moving the saddle up and a bit back to start. When riding easily on the TT bike, the saddle appears to be at a good height. When doing a real TT though, I tend to inch forward on the saddle and spin faster on top of the gear without as much heel-drop for power as I use on the road bike. In the end, I think it all works to give me an effectively lower saddle when time trialing, and I felt it in my aching knees and drop in power.

I'll be trying to get the TT bike very close to the road position and probably raising the saddle a hair to try and get as much power as I can get on the road bike. Then I'll start inching towards a more aerodynamic position while trying not to sacrifice comfort and power.

If only I had a wind-tunnel and smoke tracers in my basement... Do you suppose a box fan and some incense sticks would do the trick?

See you on the road.