Earlier in the month, I wrote this and this summarising how my season has gone so far leading up to the 100 mile TT on Sunday 7 August.
Background
When I planned out my season in October last year, I wanted to do a 100 mile TT on a fast course. There's usually a 100 in August on the A11 in Norfolk. So, I was going to build towards that.
The event was cancelled in June after a cyclist died in a separate event on the same/similar roads. Initially I wasn't sure whether to find a different 100. I wasn't particularly keen to ride this course, partly because it's the third-slowest in the country (out of 32, according to Spindata). And also because the road surface is a bit crap in places. Fine for a 25 or 50, but trying to dodge potholes for four hours takes its toll.
Slow, rough in places, gentle rolling terrain - oh and it's 0.7 miles too long, so a couple of minutes extra. Just what you want after riding for 100 miles. Not much going for G100/861 as far as it goes! Anyway, it got to the closing date in late July and I decided to enter. I thought it'd be a good training ride regardless.
Training
I wanted to get a long TT ride in before the 100. I think I'd only done a handful of long rides in the early part of the season, and hadn't ridden the bike for more than two hours since June.
I had had this idea of doing a long, race-pace effort on the East Peckham bypass for a while. I mentioned the idea to Martin, who didn't seem very enthused - I can't imagine why!
Despite the initial skepticism, Martin and I agreed to a 0600 rollout on 30 July - eight days before the 100. Perfect timing for a final training ride.
These were my TrainingPeaks notes:
Position felt uncomfortable at first, then I settled into it and felt strong. Average power around 240W initially then gradually increased 1 or 2W per lap until settling at 250W.
Thrilled with this ride. Power and HR both around 10W/10bpm below 100TT race pace - definitely felt like I had another gear. Brilliant confidence booster ahead of next week's race.
I was surprised how mentally comfortable this ride was. The loop is 7.7 miles, so 10 laps altogether. I think it helped that I was riding slightly within myself as well.
I went full race rig for this ride, as I wanted to test using a two litre bladder, borrowed from Martin, in my old Nopinz skinsuit. It worked like perfectly. I had 200g of my usual mix in there, but only drank three-quarters of it.
A couple of our nieces came for a sleepover after I did this ride, so Sunday was a rest day for multiple reasons. Then the following week was a pretty usual week with Friday off, and a very short ride on Saturday.
I woke up Saturday morning with a scratch in my throat but it felt more of a psychological issue rather than a physical illness. It's almost as if the body tries to make you think you're ill in anticipation of the deleterious race. Homeostasis and all that...
The Race
TrainingPeaks notes:
300g carbs in 2l water with ~5 scoops electrolyte powder and juice of 1 lime. Only drank ~1.3l so 200g carbs. Had a gel at the start of second lap.
Seems odd that I didn't have that much to drink. I peed a couple of times before the start though so would've been well hydrated and maybe the electrolytes hydrated me during. I didn't feel dehydrated at the end.
Really happy with this ride. Got my nutrition and hydration spot on, legs felt good, but I started a little within myself and ramped it up as the race went on.
Had a couple of hold ups but nothing major. Delighted with the power - I thought 250-260 would be about right, so 274NP is incredible. 3 years ago that was my 50TT power!
It's immensely satisfying when everything comes together like it did in this race. I had a similar experience in July for the 50 on the A3. One of those days when it feels like you're completely in control the whole way around, you execute everything that you can influence, and get a bit of luck along the way.
The course is three Y-shaped laps. I wanted to make sure I started within myself and didn't go out too hard. In both of my previous 100s, I faded towards the end. In a way it's understandable, but it definitely makes the ride less enjoyable. And I don't think you gain much by starting a bit harder, even if the overall result is more power output. Maybe that's just me.
Because I wasn't 100% sure of the roads, and the many, many roundabouts on the course, I rode with the map on my Garmin. This meant I could only have two data fields. I went for 3s Power and Current Speed. Although I largely rode on feel.
The first lap I wanted to get through feeling as comfortable as possible. I was a bit surprised by how high the power was - it didn't feel like I was pushing that hard. The field was quite small - around 25-30 starters - so I caught a few people, and was caught by two people very early on. I expected it, so wasn't surprised, let them ride off and stuck to my plan.
Lap two still felt good, hydration and nutrition were fine - I counted six bottles that had been dropped/spilled/poorly gathered. I had been there and done that last year, so I was feeling very smug that I had all of my nutrition/hydration in my little aero belly and didn't have the stress of trying to grab a bottle from somebody while riding 25mph.
The third lap I again tried to turn the effort up a little bit but I was cautious not to go too early. Because of the rolling nature of the course, I was pushing harder during the slower sections and backing off on the faster bits, so just trying to ride as hard as I could wasn't necessarily going to help.
I decided I would start riding as sustainability hard as I could from the final northerly turn. I knew it was around half an hour from there, so just pushed on and allowed myself to get it all out.
I actually surprised myself with how good I felt - the last 28 minutes were at 291W normalised which was only 8W lower than my 50 power on the same course back in June. I was still smart with where I "spent my watts", but just to a more aggressive degree.
I finished in 3 hours 52 minutes and 50 seconds which I was thrilled with. I had hoped to sneak under four hours, but I knew I'd have to do a very good ride to do it. Spindata suggests this course is about 10 minutes slower than Q100. So to finish within two minutes of my PB felt like a great result.
I've entered Q100 on 4 September and I would be over the moon with 3:42:50. Not sure what kind of shape I'll be in for that but we'll see.
What's next?
As mentioned above, I've got Q100 coming up next weekend. I was feeling a bit inadequately prepared as I had only ridden the TT bike outdoors once in the three weeks since the 100. So, again, I mentioned to Martin I was planning to head down to East Peckham, and we agreed to do another.
Incredibly, there were only 12 seconds between my two training rides. Similar setup, but 5W more this time - 255W avg, 257W normalised, and 3bpm lower.
Coincidentally, we again had people staying with us the evening after doing this ride. It serves a lot of purposes - one of which being to create a huge appetite before an indulgent evening. One of the many perks of long distance cycling...
As well as the 100, I've got a couple of 10s - one of the 10s is the day before the 100 - and a few 25s. It'd be lovely to get PBs during those races, but I'm not expecting much as I've done next to no specific work for these races in favour of volume and miles for the 50s and 100s. That's the trade-off you make, I guess.
As always, thanks for reading. I am planning to bring this blog into the 21st century and move to my own website, but it's pretty low on my to-do list to be honest.
Cheers.
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