Wussing Out (or My Second Indoor Time Trial)

Those skies look pretty ominous to me!

Joy here...After my last FAILED attempt at replicating my 15km Time Trial effort indoors on the trainer, I was all set to head back out to the Airport Parkway where the Ottawa Bicycle Club runs its weekly women-only Tuesday night Time Trial.  Now that I've got a coach, a plan, this new blog, and some data from my workouts so far, I was convinced that I'd be out there pedalling my heart out, leaving everyone else in my proverbial dust.  I'd be going so fast, that people would just see me as a colourful blur whizzing by, the sound of my wheels catching up to me after I passed.  It was going to be epic.  It was going to be awesome.

It was not to happen.

Instead, as the time approached for my Time Trial, the sky got darker and darker.  The pitter patter of rain that had been lightly falling became a bit heavier, and there were threats of thunder and lightning.  Now, I'm not too afraid of riding in a bit of rain, but I'm not overly keen on riding in a full-fledged downpour just for fun, and I'm definitely opposed to riding when there's a risk of being struck by lighting.  I mean, the road the Time Trial takes place on is open wide with the river on one side and fields on the other, and I don't intend to be the tallest thing out there, with metal components on my bike just begging for me to be struck.  Yeah, sure, it's rare, but why take the chance?

Okay, so I'm a wuss.

The rain water running in rivulets.

And wuss out I did.  It was down to the basement (again) for me.  My coach has outlined a specific Time Trial warm up regimen which involves an easy 15 minutes just to spin my leg, followed by two 8-minute sets where I build up and maintain a 177-203w final for the last 2 minutes of each set.  After that, I have to do two 15-second really high cadence sets, followed by a cool down.  All of this took me 50 minutes in my basement, as I watched The Incredibles for entertainment and inspiration, as I could see the rain falling outside my window.

Then, I wiped the sweat off my computer and reset it so that I could start my Time Trial in earnest.  Now, you see, my coach told me that I shouldn't focus on my wattage, and, in fact, I should cover that up so that I can hone my ability to work based on "perception of effort" and not just be fixated on random numbers.  Makes sense to me.  So I covered up my computer's wattage display, and just looked at the kilometres to gauge how long I should ride.

In the end, I rode for 16kms (a kilometre extra than my outdoor Time Trial) and averaged 34km/hr with a wattage of 160w.  Generally when I do an outdoor Time Trial I average around 35km/hr and closer to 200w.  I don't know if my wattage/speed was lower because I was just a wuss and wasn't pushing myself as hard as I would if I saw that data there in front of me, or if it was lower because an indoor effort never really replicates an outdoor one.

However, when I compare my speed to that of the women who actually showed up last night and pedalled their little hearts out in the torrential downpour, I find that I still would have come in the top ten.  So I guess my wussy self just has to be happy with that!

Over and out,
Joy

Warm Up Ride Stats:                         Indoor Time Trial Ride Stats:
Time:  50mins                                    Time:  28:41
Distance:  23.62km                            Distance:  16km
Avg Speed:  28.3km/hr                      Avg Speed:  34km/hr
Avg Heart Rate:  121bpm                  Avg Heart Rate:  146bpm