Start of the Race Season 2011

Been a while since I have posted a blog.

2011 has got off to a very good start, I did a race on New Years Day, which although mainly for fun (if you call racing in freezing temps fun), gave me an indication that training had been going well over the winter.

I was hoping to improve my time from 2010 by about a minute, this ended up being nearer the 2 minute mark, so very satisfying indeed. This also happened to be quick enough to win the event, now this was a very unexpected bonus. Thats is one win down, hopefully at least another 4 to go.

Since this race I have purchased a Powertap wheel, now this should help with my training to make training a little bit more precise, rather than just relying on heart rate. This has been a bit of a revelation to be honest, as I expected power to flucuate a fair bit, but not as much as I first found. I have got used to it now, and it is good being able to keep at a prescribed effort, and knowing I am actually at that effort, rather than trying to second guess my HR all of the time.

I have decided to enter some early season TT's to get some race data with the Powertap wheel, and to get the best out of the wheel, I even purchased some wheel covers, though this does make the wheel quite heavy for anything but the flatest TT courses.

The first real test was this weekend, when I rode in the Kingston Wheelers Sporting 14 mile TT. Being a sporting course, these are generally on a hilly course, and the road surface is normally not the best condition. I used the Powertap wheel with the wheel covers, even though with the hills, the normal disc wheel would have been the better choice. The race was a training race and for gathering data, so the Powertap wheel was to be used no matter how heavy the thing was.

The race went pretty well, coming 2nd by only 6 secs, and the time was around what I was hoping for. I got the data me and my coach wanted as well, so a very good race indeed.

I have another race coming up, though this one is even hillier, so I am still deciding on what wheel to use, normal disc to get a better time, or the Powertap wheel for more race data?

I will let you know ;)