Testing Day

Wow, some ridiculously crazy weather today. Blowing a gale all day, with the occasional storm front thrown in just to make things interesting.

It was the sort of morning where I would usually just throw the bike on the trainer, but unfortunately I didn't really have that choice today. So for me, it was out and into it.

The reason why I had to go out into the teeth of the storm today is that I had a 30 minute bike time trial on the program. The idea being to establish some baseline data heading into my next training block. To do this sort of time trial, you don't really have a choice, it has to be done on the road.

With that in mind, I spent about an hour last night getting the P5 ready. The idea is that you do the time trial in full race kit, so it was on with the race wheels etc. Getting the bike ready made me realise that I have ridden it since Challenge Gold Coast, so preparing it took a little while. Really though, after the bike was ready I should have known that the weather this morning would be bad. For some reason whenever I put a disc on my bike the weather just seems to go batcrap crazy. Oh well.

 Despite the time spent putting the bike together last night, when I took off this morning I realised that I hadn't got it all right. For one thing my power meter wouldn't calibrate (not quite connected properly), and my brakes were misaligned slightly. All up it took me 45 minutes to sort it all out. On top of the weather I was really beginning to question whether the session was supposed to happen at all. Still I eventually got it all sorted, and with one last hesitant look at the grey skies I was off.

Once I finally got going, the ride went well. I had a nice down wind ride to where I was going to do the TT, so got there feeling fresh. My chosen site for the TT was a 10km look along the river foreshore in the suburb of Shelley. I figured that the 30 minute TT would give me about two loops, and because it was a loop, with sections of head wind and tail wind, the wind should in theory be neutral across the entire ride. It worked pretty much like that. Not ideal conditions, but wishing for less wind wasn't going to make it happen, so it was a case of working with what I had. Once I took off I felt good. I had planned to take the first 15 minutes on the conservative side, but once I got going that plan when out the window. After 10 minutes I was worried that I had gone out too hard, but by 20 minutes I found that I was still holding my power numbers. The last 10 minutes was a bit harder, but I found that I didn't fade that much. I was certainly completely done by the end though.

I was very happy with the result though. The average speed was decent, although I think it may have been hurt a little bit by the conditions. The average power though was really encouraging. Certainly a PB and a big step up from my previous tests. It is good to see, the bike feels like it has been having big gains recently, and so this test was a very nice confirmation of those gains.

Unfortunately once I was done with the TT I still had to get home and this time I didn't have the wind on my side. To make matters worse, about 20 minutes from home the storms hit, and hit hard. You know the storm front is going to be a vicious one when your wife sends you a text and warns you to take shelter. I nearly called in the cavalry to come and bail me out, but by the stage I was fairly wet and I figured that getting a bit more wet wasn't going to kill me.

The last downside to the ride was that with all the stuffing around in the morning, by the time I got home I was all out of time for training. I was supposed to have a run off the bike, but the morning had gotten away from me. I had to be somewhere at 9:00, which required leaving home by 8:15. When I had planned my morning I thought I had given myself plenty of time to fit it all in. Oh well, best laid plans and all that.

With the run not happening, I rearranged my sessions slightly and headed down to the Swim Smooth Saturday session this afternoon. Great swim set. Tough solid session, full of crazy drafting practise. Working very hard to hold the toes of some fast people. A chunk of lactic load and a bit of a message that my swimming isn't quite where it was before I had my trip to Indonesia. Not going badly, just not fully up to scratch. Still heading in the right direction.

Long ride in the morning and I really, really hope the weather is a bit better than today.