Team Time Trial

August 24th was State TTT on the 43km Calga course. We finished up with quite a respectable ride in my opinion, since we were under no illusions about getting on the podium.

We "lost" one rider by quarter distance and our strategy was to protect our third man to help him get over the hills on the run back to the finish. So there were two of us doing the majority of the work, which was fine by me.

We finished 8th, but only just over 2min off a podium spot. We had some very strong teams starting behind us and I thought there was a distinct possibility of us getting caught. That didn't happen and while we did lose time, we were a lot closer to some strong teams than I thought would really hammer us.

I rode with my Power Tap and saw a Normalised Power for the 1hr 10min, and 43km of 255w which is pretty much what I've been calling my FTP in recent times.

Had my first Friday night track meet prior to the TTT and it was good to get some leg speed happening again. Paul Craft who started this RAW (Race All Winter) Series some years ago does a terrific job of providing a good night of racing for everyone. Mostly get 4 or 5 races a night, and Paul always creates some interesting race formats. I'm headed out there again this Friday.

Since the TTT, I've introduced some L6 work as specific training for my Pursuit in October. Ugly stuff!

Here are the details of my most recent L6 workouts:

#1: 4 x 90sec @ 380w (8min R) then 4 x 30sec @ ~ 500w (2min R) done on my trusty Kurt Kinetic trainer.

#2: 3 x 2min @ 380w but decaying to around 320w at the end of each rep (8min R) then 3 x 1min @ 390w (4min R) done on the road.

#3: This workout done on Dunc Gray Velodrome: Had planned for a series of flying 1km and flying 500m reps but had no legs on the day....they just wouldn't / couldn't produce the required speed / power, so I changed to 6 x flying 250's and 4 x Standing start 250's and went home with my tail between my legs.

#4: 3 x 2min @ 380w (8min R) then 3 x 1min @ 390w (4min R) then 3 x 30sec @ ~ 500w (2min R) on the road.

#5: 3 sets of 4 x 30sec @ ~500w (30sec R) with 10min R between sets) done on the trainer.

After some good advice, I'm trying the approach of very high (for me) power intervals. Short, with longer recoveries. Traditionally, AWC type training levels are done at ~135% of FTP, mine being ~ 255w at present, so it will be interesting to see how this translates to on track performance. As you can see, my minimum power for the above workouts is around 150%, with some decay of power in the last 30sec of longer (i.e. 2min) reps.

Did my commute ride to work this morning and sat up in SST / low L4 range at every opportunity for the ~ 50min. Gotta say, legs felt pretty good too. Will take it a bit easier on the way home, hoping to have something in my legs for my track workout in the morning.

Going to back up on Friday night for some bunch racing.

Current CTL is 104.1 with 682 TSS points accumulated last week. TSB is neutral or just in positive right now.

Mike