2013 Alabama State Time Trial

2013 Alabama State Time Trial Pro/1/2 podium – Payne Griffin (Marx and Bensdorf), Mike Olheiser (Cashcall), and Brian Toone (Friends of the Great Smokies)

Quick summary
3rd place behind Mike Olheiser (Cashcall Mortgage) and Payne Griffin (Marx and Bensdorf). I read recently that you weren’t supposed to start your posts with podium pictures, but I’m really, really proud of this one so please excuse the blogging faux pas.

The details
I finished up my ride for Team Red, White, and Blue on Tuesday and didn’t touch my bike until Friday with Craig from Brick Alley giving it a thorough overhaul after 862 miles of pavement, dirt, and gravel and my legs getting a much, much needed rest. Josiah and I biked over to the bikeshop (on my old Scott), Josiah’s first “commute” on somewhat busier roads. I came home with the Litespeed, and Kristine stopped by on her way home from work to pick up the Scott.

I wasn’t sure how such an intense effort as a not-quite 40K time trial would be on my legs, and as it turns out it really hurt. I ended up doing the time trial mostly in Zone 4 heartrate because the pain in my quads was really bad. I focused on trying to keep good aerodynamic form on the downhills and across the top of the uphills but stood up on most of the smaller hills to give my legs a bit of a break as I torqued hard on the bars. Initially I was targetting a 315 watt average, but that became unreasonable after a few minutes so I basically continued to target that as a maximum for the flat sections and then running 250-275 watts on the downhills and 350 watts on the steeper uphills.

All of this meant that I was slow on the way out. Mike started 30 seconds behind me and passed me within the first 2 or 3 minutes of the race. Payne started right in front of me and was long out of sight. Travis Sherman had started one minute in front of me and was also long out of sight. At the turnaround, it looked like Travis was still about a minute ahead of me but my legs started to feel better (i.e., less pain) the farther I got into the ride so I cranked it up a bit on the way back and ended up catching Travis across the top of the Firetower climb. I’m thinking that with the freshest possible legs I could have cut maybe another minute from my time but that still wouldn’t have put me anywhere in the ballpark of the TT crushers Mike and Payne.

Afterwards, it was fun to chat with all the riders from across the state and several from out of state including Greg Miller from Knoxville came down to partner with Larry Gunter to win the BVI tandem state crown. Also, Ryan Boyle came over from Georgia and raced strong in the T2 Para category (see photos below).

Ryan Boyle finishing strong

Awesome to see strong rides from these para athletes.

Finally, here’s all my heartrate data from the race –

Heartrate zone summary (click to enlarge)

Annotated heartrate plot (click to enlarge)

Critical power curve – note that I had my all-time best for this time duration last year when I went back out to the course and re-rode the time trial after being sick the week before during the actual time trial. (click to enlarge)

1 minute power data for time trial
Interval	Miles	AvgPow	MaxPow	HR	RPM	MPH
0-1min		0.39	353	751	141	91	23.9
1-2min		0.36	389	531	164	79	21.4
2-3min		0.44	280	389	165	82	26.4
3-4min		0.52	275	344	169	84	31.4
4-5min		0.4	302	404	166	84	24
5-6min		0.33	290	485	166	78	19.9
6-7min		0.54	284	404	161	88	32.4
7-8min		0.43	272	426	164	83	25.9
8-9min		0.31	316	510	166	79	18.8
9-10min		0.43	286	385	168	85	25.5
10-11min	0.41	272	358	163	88	24.8
11-12min	0.29	318	498	165	83	17.4
12-13min	0.42	281	432	169	81	25
13-14min	0.41	322	477	164	78	24.9
14-15min	0.37	284	375	166	81	22.3
15-16min	0.29	306	403	166	75	17.6
16-17min	0.49	251	389	163	84	29.2
17-18min	0.29	307	543	164	82	17.1
18-19min	0.22	345	538	169	80	13.1
19-20min	0.32	271	411	171	82	19
20-21min	0.32	289	410	166	77	19.4
21-22min	0.41	267	386	166	75	24.5
22-23min	0.37	295	425	163	78	22.2
23-24min	0.39	284	388	165	76	23.2
24-25min	0.51	219	393	162	82	30.5
25-26min	0.58	203	416	153	92	35.1
26-27min	0.45	302	554	164	83	27
27-28min	0.5	243	369	164	86	30.3
28-29min	0.39	328	411	164	85	23.7
29-30min	0.41	266	486	171	77	24.8
30-31min	0.4	330	494	168	83	24.2
31-32min	0.33	303	469	175	80	20
32-33min	0.34	335	567	173	84	20.4
33-34min	0.38	315	507	174	82	22.9
34-35min	0.18	365	550	180	76	11.1
35-36min	0.31	306	472	180	80	18.7
36-37min	0.3	326	472	181	78	18.1
37-38min	0.4	267	388	176	77	24.1
38-39min	0.46	280	436	170	83	27.6
39-40min	0.38	284	497	174	79	22.7
40-41min	0.48	232	354	167	77	28.6
41-42min	0.5	144	452	162	72	30.3
42-43min	0.5	313	438	163	85	30
43-44min	0.35	323	573	174	79	20.8
44-45min	0.51	255	354	171	86	30.9
45-46min	0.43	295	408	168	85	25.8
46-47min	0.36	302	512	175	82	21.7
47-48min	0.54	264	341	172	86	32.5
48-49min	0.44	302	437	172	80	26.6
49-50min	0.48	271	412	173	83	28.8
50-51min	0.44	286	378	172	83	26.7
51-52min	0.36	316	484	174	86	21.3
52-53min	0.3	331	486	178	77	18
53-54min	0.5	265	394	175	85	29.7
54-55min	0.4	316	406	173	82	24.1
55-56min	0.33	340	430	177	81	19.6
56-57min	0.45	296	416	180	81	27.1