Of pointy hats and small cogs

After a summer of trying out a few informal "club 10" time trials, I finally managed to complete something bigger on Monday: an open 50 mile TT on one of the fastest courses in the country. Over 100 riders took part, with the winner riding finishing in 1:40:50 (that's nearly 30mph!). I managed a respectable 2:05:43, which is 23.86mph or 38.4km/h, but still finished more than eight minutes behind the women's winner and only 6th out of the women's field. Still, I was satisfied with my performance as I managed to pace it fairly evenly (more about that below), with 1:02:57 for the first 25 miles and 24:42 for the last 10 miles. I'm hoping these numbers bode well for my open 10 mile TT in two weeks and 25 mile TT at the end of September. Not only are these TTs good training for Kona, but they'll give me good baseline times to improve next year, not to mention a shot at some trophies at the Kingston Wheelers awards dinner at the end of the year!

The data and discussion of my ride are below, but before I get into that, I thought I'd provide a newbie's point of view of time trialling in the UK. According to Wikipedia, it's quite an old sport, first beginning in 1895 and historically being held on the fastest roads available. Supposedly, races were held illicitly for many years as the highway code didn't allow any racing at all. Now it's a sport with a devoted following of early-risers (TTs often start at 6am) who squeeze every conceivable ounce of speed and aerodynamic advantage out of their equipment possible; I thought triathletes were bad, but TTers put them to shame! When I arrived at HQ, I was shocked at the number of bling frames, frighteningly low handlebars, disc wheels, aero helmets, tiny gear cogs and skinsuits all in one place. In fact, I felt rather out of place in my regular bike jersey and shorts (albeit the tightest-fitting I own), triathlon shoes, and a mere 60mm deep rear wheel with *gasp!* my everyday cassette on it. At least I had picked up an aero helmet at the last minute, so from far away I didn't look too out of place. But it's funny how a sport as old school and grassroots as time trialling -- where sleeveless shirts are not permitted but helmets are optional -- has at the same time the most flashy equipment and slick-looking riders. I didn't see anything like BBAR champ Nik Bowdler's bike (pictured below), but there were certainly a lot of huge chainrings and tiny cogs around!


That's a 73 tooth chainring on the front!

My start time was 7:43am, but given the convoluted course instructions I figured I'd better get there early to drive it and make sure I knew where all the turns were. I needn't have worried, as the organisers had signed everything very well and placed marshals at every junction. Not a fun job to stand on the side of a divided highway and point an endless stream of cyclists in the right direction for hours on end -- at least in a road race you get to watch the attacks and breaks! -- but the volunteers were great, even cheering me on each time I passed their grim position. The weather turned out better than expected, as the chilly wind from the previous few days had died down considerably, leaving only a misty drizzly and warm morning. Later on the mist lifted and the roads dried up, and nearly all the top times were owned by vets, who started long after 8am and enjoyed extremely fast course conditions compared to the early starters.

I didn't really have a goal time in mind, but figured somewhere around 2 hours 5 minutes would be a good time for me in my first go at the 50 mile distance. After Googling around to try and figure out a good wattage number to aim for, I finally decided on ~215 watts, or ~95% of my test FTP on the TT bike: much harder than the 80-85% I'd target for a 56-mile half-Ironman bike leg, but not as all-out as a Richmond Park three-lap challenge. In fact, I had read that a good perceived effort for a 50 mile TT was more or less that of an Olympic triathlon (which lasts roughly the same amount of time), so I kept that in mind while I was out there.

According to Joe Friel, the third quarter of a TT is always the hardest, even if you hold back in the first half. Paced properly, the last quarter can be quite strong; paced badly, I would imagine it to be a complete sufferfest. Below is my power graph for the entire event, divided roughly into four quarters (and slightly smoothed for ease of viewing). Even though my VI is 1.01 -- nearly perfect for a more or less flat time trial -- it's apparent I didn't pace anywhere near perfectly.

Heart rate is red, power is yellow, elevation is orange.

First quarter:

Duration:   30:59
Work:       392 kJ
TSS:        42.6 (intensity factor 0.908)
Norm Power: 213
VI:         1.01
Pw:HR:       5.18%
Pa:HR:       -4.93%

I managed to go out a bit hard for the first 15 minutes or so. In fact, after the first five minutes when I realised that I forgot to switch my cassette from the hilly IMLP 12-25 to a more appropriate 11-23 for a flat time trial, I decided I'd better try and compensate the loss of speed and power on the downhills by going a tiny bit harder on the uphills (bad idea, next time just make sure to start with the proper cassette!)

Second quarter:

Duration:   32:02
Work:       400 kJ
TSS:        42.9 (intensity factor 0.897)
Norm Power: 211
VI:         1.01
Pw:HR:       4.71%
Pa:HR:       -1.44%

I was expecting a headwind at any moment once I turned south again, 20 miles into the event, but it never seemed to come. In fact, the section between 20 and 25 miles felt the best of the whole day. Riding past the turn-off for the finish line, I started the second lap feeling pretty good.

Third quarter:

Duration:   31:48
Work:       387 kJ
TSS:        40.9 (intensity factor 0.878)
Norm Power: 206
VI:         1.02
Pw:HR:       4.46%
Pa:HR:       -18.3%

Somewhere between 30 and 40 miles, I started to suffer, as my legs were really starting to hurt and I wondered how I could possibly do another 30 minutes at my current pace. It felt like my watts were really dropping (though it probably just seemed that way as I glanced at my powermeter probably at moments where I knew I was slacking off). I also started to lose focus a bit. Spending 90 minutes by myself, riding at the same pace, in the same position, on a boring straight highway with traffic roaring by was taking its toll mentally. In reality, I was only down a handful of watts, but at the time it felt like I was pedalling in molasses.

Fourth quarter:

Duration:   30:56
Work:       397 kJ
TSS:        43.4 (intensity factor 0.918)
Norm Power: 216
VI:         1.01
Pw:HR:       -2.9%
Pa:HR:       -5.96%

Thankfully in TTs the last 10 miles are counted down one by one; whether that's for added pacing assistance or just to motivate the riders to finish, I was overjoyed to see those markers. The final 5 miles seemed to go by more quickly than expected, so I guess I had more left in the tank than I thought. The final mile was downhill and with one eye on the clock, I was pretty sure I'd break 2:06 and I did. You're supposed to yell out your number to the timing official but I really had nothing left as I passed him. No doubt about it, I left nothing on the course and in fact had to pull over to eat something before I started the 15-minute easy ride back up the hill to HQ. A rider who finished just after me rode by and I couldn't even bring myself to make conversation, let alone join him. I was simply too spent.

Overall, I managed 1:02:57 for the first half and 1:02:46 for the second half, with 212 NP for each. Next time I'll make more an effort to hold back a little bit at the start, and be more mentally prepared for the draggy third quarter so my watts don't drop so much. Between that and some very needed aero improvements (as can be seen from the photo below!) I should be able to get a lot closer to 2 hours for 50 miles on a good day.

Copyright Charles Whitton Photography

Happier endings

This week was much better on the racing front. Three races, three top-3 results, though to be fair all of the races were women-only and two of them had fewer than 10 riders! Such is the state of women's cycle racing, which is a bit sad when you think that I live on the outskirts of the biggest city in the UK. And most of us know lots of women cyclists who ride with our clubs, commute to work, do sportives or triathlons, etc. but for whatever reason can't be talked into giving cycle racing a go. Is it the ugly crashes highlighted on the news in the pro races that scare them away from the sport? Or just the simple competitiveness; the idea that when you race, you are forced by your competitors to push yourself to the limit most times? Not sure, but I do wish more women would get involved in cycle racing. I'd love to do a road race with 50+ women all more or less my ability, the way Jim can do with his fellow cat 3 guys. Instead I do races filled with elites and Olympic hopefuls who trounce me, or races with fewer than a dozen women, only half of which manage to hang on til the end. Anyway, stuff to think about for a later blog post.

Last week we had some really great weather, which always makes me motivated to get outside and be active. Late summer and never knowing if it might be the final spell of sun and warmth until next spring might have something to do with it. In any case, even with Monday as a rest day I managed a 14.5 hour training week, more than 11 of which were spent on my bike either riding to/from races, racing, or riding around watching others race. It was also my last week neglecting my TT bike as I need to get back to it this week and start building up some long rides for Kona. It's been nice for the break, but at the same time I'm looking forward to riding fast into the wind again, ha ha.

Tuesday -- Crystal Palace
Not quite as many as the week before, but still ten of us showed up to race the second-to-last week of the Palace circuits. Series leader Charlie Blackman was there, as was SE Road Race champ Natalie Creswick, so it was looking like a promisingly tough race. I was curious to see if we could catch Charlie once she (inevitably) got away solo, and we managed to do it once -- though by doing so dropped all but four other riders. Or was it more like she sat up to take a rest before riding off again to finish a few hundred metres ahead of us in first place... Still, my bike handling is improving and I worked my butt off both to try and catch Charlie and to hold off Natalie who's been stronger than I have at every race we've ever done. In the end, as I was coming up the hill on the final lap giving it all I had and waiting for the inevitable sprint to come around me which never came, I let up just a moment too soon and was pipped at the line for 2nd by Melanie Sneddon from the Penzance team. Frustrating, but since she had done quite a bit of work to try and get away from us -- and managed to reach and stay with Charlie a short while before being dropped and coming back to us with a couple of laps to go -- I couldn't complain. She definitely deserved to beat me. Leona had another strong ride finishing 5th, and both of us were not surprised to see our power data show a 10-watt jump in effort from the previous week. It was a tough race!


Leona leads early on, with Charlie on her wheel waiting to pounce, photo from London Cycle Sport

Saturday -- Hog Hill
Having run 19km on Thursday evening then ridden 110km on Friday in the alternating sunshine and pouring rain to watch the Surrey League Revolutions 5-day race (with my teammates Steve Saunders and James Beaumont taking part), my legs were feeling a bit heavy. But I'd been meaning to give Hog Hill a try all summer and this was the last chance to do it in a low-key women's race (unlike the rather higher profile London Open Circuit champs in two weeks' time). So Leona and I rode the 20km to London's Liverpool St. station -- a kind of contest all on its own, to keep out from under bus wheels and away from cab doors -- then grabbed a train to Goodmayes, then rode another few km to the circuit. Sure enough, there's a good little hill there, but nothing too crazy. Seven girls were on the start line, two fell off almost immediately, and the other two were dropped with a lap to go when one of the riders thought it was the bell lap and attacked going up the hill. I sat on her wheel easily, thinking "oh, that's smart, attacking before the bell instead of after", only to find out as we crossed the line that she thought it was the finish! Been there, done that... so we took off again for another lap and this time with the help of Leona clearing the right-hand side for me, it was my turn to attack going up the hill. I gunned it pretty hard and knew I was in the lead, but mindful of losing at the line I was afraid to glance around and see who was where behind me. Turned out I needn't have worried! So that was my first victory and felt pretty good to finally get one. Nice to get the £15 too and set a couple of new power records for everything from 10 to 30 seconds.


Yep, pretty sure I have this one sewn up! photo from London Cycle Sport

Sunday -- Goodwood
I only needed 11 points to get my cat 2 license, but none of the British Cycling reps at Hog Hill could tell me what my win got me, so I figured I'd better do the 3/4 women's race at Goodwood anyway, just to be sure. Early morning races are never my thing and this one was no different, though once we arrived at sunny warm Goodwood and had a lap of the course I was feeling a bit more awake. Seventeen riders lined up at the start -- good turnout for a women's race! -- and we set off a minute or so behind the men's cat 4 race at quite a slow pace. No matter, I was happy for the extra warm-up. It was a windy day, and what with the flat gently turning circuit it was going to take legs of steel and courage to match in order to get away from the bunch on this one. I tried a couple of attacks to see what would happen, but only succeeded in tiring out the less experienced riders and thinning out the bunch to nine. A crash in the men's race on the finishing sprint just after they overtook us meant the first part of our last lap was neutralised, but afterwards it was just a waiting game to see who would start to sprint first. I had my eye on who I thought the strongest rider in the race was and stuck to her wheel like glue til the closing few hundred metres when she was led out nicely by some friends in the race. Despite my best plans to wait until the last second (we were sprinting into a headwind) to try and come around her, I just didn't have enough in my legs to do it, not to mention picked a wrong gear and couldn't get on top of it. In the end, she won a good race and I finished over a bike length back. 2nd place at a circuit like that, not bad.


Just couldn't get around her, though it might help if I could sprint better than a Dutch commuter.

A return to cycle racing

Week one of shorter, but more frequent posts to my blog. Pics are Jim's, as usual.

Being done with IMLP but with lots of time before IMH, I decided that I should get back into cycle racing again. My last race was over two months ago, and one thing I've noticed is how my 1-minute and 5-minute peak power have dropped, not to mention how rusty my "feel" on the bike has gotten at high speed, in tight corners, and around other bikes in the bunch. As well, my FTP could use some rebuilding after several weeks of Ironman taper and recovery. And cycle racing is just plain fun and a great workout! So with that in mind, I was off to Dunsfold Park this morning for the women's cat 3/4 Surrey League race.


Leona and I warm up in the shadow of a giant 747

Dunsfold Park is also serves as the test track for the TV show Top Gear. In fact, our finish line is the very same as the one for "Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car". Today's course around the airfield was slightly shortened and modified, turning us up the main runway (car tire donuts could be seen everywhere) and back down the outside. I never realised how massively wide an airfield runway is, and how long/large the paint patches have to be to read them from the sky. Of course, the crosswind meant that 60-odd cyclists were strung out in a line along the grassy edge of this 45-metre wide stretch of perfect tarmac, but it wouldn't be bike racing if someone wasn't riding onto the grass in a panic.


Dunsfold Park Aerodrome

Only five women showed up for the women's race, so we decided to join the men's 4th cat race instead. Probably less of a workout for me, but certainly better for getting the rust off my racing skills. Everything went well, with some attacks getting away but always been dragged back. About 25 minutes into the race, I found myself near the front on the sharpest corner and coming out of it I was in a group of five or six guys pulling pretty hard. I pulled through, a couple of guys sprinted by me and I realised we had a bit of a gap on everyone else. I kept riding hard, and just when I started to flag, someone new would bridge across to me, giving me a wheel to sit on and catch my breath for a few seconds. A hundred metres ahead of us was the strongest break of the day, four guys who were working well together. By now a few guys had managed to bridge over, so I decided to go for it and pedalled my heart out for several minutes trying to reach them. But it was like paddling in a strong upstream current towards a bridge: you can see it there, it's kind of getting closer, yet you seem to be making no quick headway. After a while, I realised the rest of the bunch had caught me and was happily sitting on my wheel as I put out 275 watts... yes, did I mention my race smarts were a bit rusty too?


Should have realised that I was already caught here, but my head's still down!

After that, I mostly hung in the bunch, tried to move up before the corners and accelerate smoothly out of them. A dead-flat course with a 90-degree corner at one end and a 135-degree corner at the other made more interesting by traffic cones narrowing the road and some large potholes; I was not in my element. We had dropped two of the women, leaving three of us in the main group when the last break was reeled in a few laps before the finish. The two ladies had been joined by a couple of guys who'd also been dropped, and they were working together as a tidy foursome. The only problem was, we lapped them just as we crossed the finish line for what I thought would be the bell lap (the lap counter had been displaying '3' two laps previous). And the bell rang, sort of. The lap counter now said 1. A few of us looked at each other and asked "so is this the last lap then?" And suddenly the whole bunch sped up, so we did too. Coming around the final sharp corner, I was on my teammate Leona's wheel but she had picked a bad line on the windward side of the course. Wheels were going by me on the leeward side, so I jumped onto one and started moving up the field. With 100m to go, I noticed the third woman ahead of me but catchable, though that meant giving it full-bore and standing up to sprint past her. Which I did... just in time to hear the bell ringing again, signifying the real last lap.


Ian (far left) sprints for second

Being so out of touch racing-wise, it didn't really occur to me that the bell was ringing until the bunch shot past me and a gap opened up. Leona rode up beside me and we both cursed the air blue over the confusion, and our own idiocy being caught out. Well, nothing to do but try to catch the bunch and latch back on. We both worked pretty hard up the runway straight, but by then my heart wasn't in it. Came around the final corner (again!) and Leona went for the sprint while I sat up and threw my hands in the air. Disappointing 3rd place for me, about 50th overall. Later I learned that the bell and lap counter had been for the group we were lapping (why those four riders should take precedence over the entire bunch is something I didn't get to ask the race organiser). Oh well, that's cycle racing I guess. Next time I'll be more aware of bells and riders.


Not happy at the finish!

The best part of the day, though, was hearing my Kingston Wheelers teammate Ian -- he of the strong steady wheel and awesome slipstream -- came 2nd overall and has now moved up to join Jim in the 3rd cats. Leona got enough points to move into 2nd cat and I'm now only 25 points away from 2nd cat myself. Not sure if it's worth really pursuing that promotion before the end of the season (rankings in regional women's cycle racing up to 1st cat seem somewhat arbitrary anyway, as points are given out for the top ten in every race and there are barely ten women in any given race), but it does give me a reason now to race at some of the other local circuits I haven't made tried yet, just to pick up points! Feels good to be back racing again.

Milestones and Benchmarks

Yesterday was my birthday and I've now hit that (magical?) 35-year mark. Halfway to 40, a "veteran" category runner, and apparently I should be starting now if I want to have kids someday. A lot to think about! Of course I benefit from aging up to the 35-39 category for my Ironman, and I get to use the excuse that the girls who thrash me soundly in my cycle races are young enough to be my kids (not that I was much of a sprinter when I was their age regardless!) In the sense, I should be glad to be aging, as not only am I genetically more inclined to the endurance side, I've got nearly 20 years of base-building behind me to support it. Put them in a 6-hour race against me and I'll win every time, right? So why am I racing those one-hour crits again?

Otherwise I've had a reasonable training week, getting over the cold I had last week and setting some new benchmarks and best times:

Cycling

• Tuesday: a hard clockwise lap of Richmond Park on the road bike, setting a new best time of 19:31. Had I really wanted to set a big PB, I should have ridden the other way to have the wind at my back on the long draggy climb up to Richmond Gate, but mostly I wanted to get a 20-min baseline power level.


• Wednesday: my first ever 10-mile time trial, a low-key event put on by my club every other week. It consists of riding 5 miles as hard as possible down a divided highway, turning at the roundabout, then riding the same 5 miles back (again as hard as possible). I put down a respectable 25:33 time, not bad considering I've never ridden the course and I was on my road bike with no aero bars. I wanted to get a baseline wattage from the Powertap so I could compare and contrast with later TTs on my TT bike (alas I'm still waiting for my Powertap 650c Hed wheel to be built).

Interesting to compare the 2 sets of data (taken from WKO+). The peak 20-min power numbers were also fairly similar (250NP/240AP for Richmond Park and 247NP/242AP for the time trial), though the shorter effort had a higher VI as I was resting in the 30 seconds immediately following the 19:31 effort!

	Club 10-Mile TT				Richmond Park lap
Duration	25:31 (25:37)				19:30 (19:31)
Work	369 kJ				283 kJ
TSS	41.8 (IF 0.992)				32.4 (IF 0.999)
Norm Power	248				250
VI	1.03				1.03
Pw:HR	5.48%				-0.6%
Pa:HR	-1.37%				6.07%
Distance	16.121 km				10.834 km
Elevation Gain	274 m				294 m
Elevation Loss	290 m				289 m
Grade	-0.1 % (-17 m)				0.0 % (5 m)
	Min	Max	Avg		Min	Max	Avg
Power	0	519	241	watts	0	397	241	watts
Heart Rate	118	182	174	bpm	146	180	169	bpm
Cadence	50	114	97	rpm	62	150	96	rpm
Speed	2	52.8	37.9	kph	14.5	54.1	33.3	kph
Pace	1:08	30:00	1:35	min/km	1:07	4:08	1:48	min/km
Altitude	79	119	100	m	3	57	30	m
Crank Torque	0	64.1	23.8	N-m	0	43.6	24.1	N-m

Judging from my data in the power distribution chart in WKO+, my FTP is around 250 watts, though I have yet to formally test it on a good, rested day. Both the efforts above run a little low if my FTP really is 250. However, I felt during both of them that I "could have gone harder but just couldn't" if that makes any sense. On Tuesday I was still feeling the effects of my cold, as evidenced by my low average HR, and on Wednesday my legs felt a bit tired from Tuesday. Still, it's good to set some numbers as a baseline.

My plan for next week is to complete two 20-min efforts in the park with a two minute rest between, to try and get a solid idea of my peak 60-minute power or FTP for training purposes. I'll probably do this on Tuesday after a reasonably easy Monday. The next club 10-mile TT is the week after that, when I'll (hopefully) have my tri bike PT wheel finished, or if not I'll pop some clip-on aero bars on my road bike and reverse the seatpost to approximate my TT bike position (not sure how much effect it will have on my wattage, but it should make me a bit faster!) Then at the beginning of the taper for my Ironman I'll do a 25-mile TT to get my real and current 60-min FTP to set my race wattages for IMLP accordingly.

• Saturday: a long ride with Jim into the Surrey Hills to tackle a couple of our favourite climbs (my first such ride with the Powertap). I managed to get up the nearly 1km 10% Whitedown in a new best time of 4:00 flat, average watts 281, knocking nearly a minute off my previous fastest. Since my peak 5-minute power is 294, I think there's room for improvement there too (and I'm already wincing at my next date with Whitedown, that's gonna hurt!)

Running

Probably part of why I was a bit tired on Wednesday was that I did some hard 1-mile running intervals earlier in the day. I've recently become a paying member of Endurance Nation again, as I felt I needed that extra little push in doing my best at Lake Placid. According to the Vdot calculator, I've got a Vdot of 48 these days (not having done a 10km race for ages, I had to use my most recent 3-mile club handicap for the calculations). According to EN's formula, my running paces are as follows:

Run Zones
Zone	HR	Pace Mile/km
Z1/EP	< 151	8:49/5:28
Z2/MP	152-161	7:32/4:41
Z3/HMP	162-170	7:14/4:30
Z4/TP	171-177	7:05/4:24
Z5/IP	> 178	6:39/4:08

Most of the workouts in the EN plan call for longer intervals at Z3 and Z4 pace, not a whole lot at Z5 (intervals of five minutes or less). Lo and behold, my mile repeats were exactly at Z5 pace which more or less confirms my Vdot zones, so that's useful. Thankfully I can now do the lion's share of my running at the more reasonable Z3 and Z4 from now on!


Swimming

Erm... nothing to report here yet, but I will be tackling some outdoor swims at the Princes Club on Monday evenings from now on. Apparently the water is a balmy 15 degrees Celsius, just cold enough to make me want to swim pretty hard, wetsuit or not! Yikes. Fridays I'll be hitting either the indoor pool in Kingston, or the heated outdoor pool in Hampton.


Racing

As I've been writing this, the Grand Prix criterium at Hillingdon was taking place (i.e., an hour of pain and punishment at the hands of the country's elite female crit riders and sprinters). I'd signed up for it, but once I found out the course was going to be run backwards from what I'm used to -- meaning the normal uphill finish becomes a flat tailwind sprint -- I decided not to bother going, in favour of getting in that 90-minute run I never did this week. I went through a major review of my training schedule the other day, and with only 10 weeks to go before Ironman Lake Placid, I think running today is infinitely wiser than racing a crit, from an IM training point of view. So today's run will include two 15-minute intervals at Z3 in Richmond Park, which is a great ipod pace for my first post-35th-birthday run.

10 weeks to go! Holy @#$%!

A tale of two races

Sid Standard Memorial Race

Having had a little break from cycle racing the past few weeks for the marathon, I was eager to get back to it. Last week my monster 15 hours spent training (but the weather's just been too nice not to get out there and ride!) meant that Sunday's National Women's Team Series race just outside Nottingham would be an interesting test of the legs. As a member of the Surrey League ladies team, I was racing with a handful of other women from local clubs -- all of whom, like me, don't have enough teammates to put together their own teams -- for the first time this season. It's a team series, meaning that the top 4 results per team count toward the points ranking, and the final trophy goes to the winningest team rather than an individual (though each race rewards individual winners too of course).

The race started out fast with several riders on the front (most notably elite rider Charlie Blackman of the London Dynamo) driving the pace and controlling the attacks, but after four laps when it appeared that no cohesive break would stay away and the bunch was whittled down to 30 or so riders, things settled down a bit. On the sixth lap as we approached the main climb on the course, a little 500m 3% affair, I found myself at the front and decided to take a run at it and see what happened. I hit the climb hard and didn't look back til I got to the top -- much to my surprise, the bunch was more than 50 metres behind me! Unfortunately I was now descending into a crosswind so I tucked down and did my best, but after 2km the bunch came back (note to self for next time: if the motorcycle pulls in front of you, you've been caught and can stop working now).

The legs felt good though, almost like that little super-threshold effort woke them up, so I stayed near the front of the remainder of the race, hoping a late break would still materialise. My teammate Jen Hewitt had a few digs, as did some other riders, but again nothing stuck. So the flat finish meant a bunch sprint, where my skills are not particularly well-suited. Being a bit scared off by the argy-bargy and generally poor bike handling of the field in the final lap, I did not try to contest the sprint and instead just stayed safely out of trouble, finishing 23rd overall. The race was won by Laura Trott, the up-and-coming and talented junior who placed quite well at the recent KW Dunsfold 3rd cat road race. I discovered one of my teammates, Nikki Wheeler, can put in a sprint, so next time I'll know to try and help her out better if it comes down to a bunch finish. The photo above of Jen on the front with me a ways back in the bunch (both of us in white jerseys) is a pretty typical view of the Sid Standard race. The British Cycling write-up, where we both earned a nice mention despite finishing outside the top 20, is here.

But the truth is, for me to have any success at women's racing (or any racing for that matter), I need to create, join, or force a break to happen -- not solo! -- so I can put my ability to suffer at threshold for a long time to good use. Looking at my power profile according to Coggan, my five-second peak power is the equivalent of a lowly cat 4, and at one and five minutes I'm only a bit better at mid cat 2 level. It's power at FT where I'm strongest, as I'm putting out ~230 watts with my 54kg, making me a 4.25watts/kg solid cat 1 equivalent. And given what seems to be some hill climbing ability on steeper grades, I think I need to find some hillier races with better prospects for a break escaping and staying away til the finish. (As an aside, now that we've got our new Powertaps, I need to do another round of testing to make these numbers a little more firm and set myself some goals.)


Hillingdon Tuesday Night Series

Jim's been wanting to do some more racing, so despite a nice steady 90km ride on Monday afternoon that left our legs a bit tired, last night we headed over to the Hillingdon summer series (my favourite local circuit of all that I've raced so far) to take on the cat 4 race. I had been playing with the idea of entering the E/1/2/3 race as there's a £15 prize for the top female finisher, but once I got there and saw a) how huge the sign-on list already was, b) a well-known pro men's team warming up, and c) women's pro rider Leda Cox who would undoubtably take the prize money, I wisely decided that the cat 4 race was the way to go. And that way Jim and I could race together, a first!

All was going well, with both of us in the front 5-10 riders for most of the race. I had gone off at a good pace almost immediately, as the bunch had started so slowly that I feared a massive acceleration where I would not be able to grab a wheel, and ended up leading most of the first lap. Then the attacks started, but with a headwind going up the hill and a tailwind coming down the back straight, conditions were not great for a solo break to last. Jim bridged to (or chased down, depending on how you saw it) a London Dynamo rider but that didn't last, and he ended up on the front as the E/1/2/3 race stormed by. A few other guys put in some digs and the bunch always collected them back into the fold after half a lap or so. The E/1/2/3s passed us once again, rather scarily through the hairpin turns where a lot of riders have difficulty holding a line, but everyone made it through safely.

Around 15 laps into it, I put in some effort latching onto escaping riders, thinking that even though the sun was setting, there was a lot of time left in this one-hour race. That cost me as I had slipped back to 15-20th place by the time we got to the lap board, and stupidly failed to notice that we were heading for the bell lap til the bell was actually ringing. Well out of position to do anything in the final lap, I tried valiantly to move up on the back stretch and nearly did it on the final corner, til the wheel I was following sat up and stopped working. Alas, unless I'm in the top 5 or so coming around that corner, I just don't have the power to put in a strong finish against the guys, so even though I got around him and got some speed up for the little climb, it was too late. To add insult to injury, some well-meaning guy who was determined to get 19th instead of 20th place muscled me over towards the grass in the final chicane, killing all my speed.

At that moment, I could see Jim ahead who was in a better position for the final sprint, but then a massive crash took down four guys right in front of him, so I slowed up completely and just rolled across the line (after I had a close look at the four downed riders and determined with relief that he wasn't one of them!) The crash looked nasty and I think one of the guys involved was a Twickenham rider that I'd already shouted at twice during the race to hold his line (the second time after he'd been weaving all over the back straight in an attempt not to do any work on the front and get people to come around him). Jim had to lean into a rider next to him to avoid riding over one of the downed rider's heads, but he stayed upright himself, though his sprint was finished.

I'm a bit annoyed with myself for missing the lap boards and losing focus right at the moment when I needed it the most, but given the crash, maybe I'm glad to have been in the back half of the pack towards the finish. It didn't look good and an ambulance with flashing lights turned into Springfield Rd as we were riding home, presumably to collect one of the victims. That's about the 3rd or 4th race I've done at Hillingdon that contained an ambulance-worthy crash, and I've only raced there 5 times! I wonder how long til the law of averages gets me. I definitely wish it could have been longer as my legs felt great and longer races suit me anyway. As it was, the one-hour came up a bit short, only 42 minutes which was about 17 laps, 38.6km/h avg speed.

I think some of the riders in our race could learn a thing or two from these guys on how to hold a line going up the final hill...