Apr 11
28
A New Time Trial Personal Best!
No thats not me - I'm in the picture at the bottom of the page
Before last night, my personal best for a 10 mile time trial was 26 minutes 15 seconds, which I set last year.
My target for the year was to do a 10 mile time trial in under 24 minutes before the season was over.
I entered the Barnesbury CC 10 mile time trial, it was a spur of the moment decision, I really had no intentions of participating, especially since I had just had a hard workout the day before.
I signed on and got my number, assembled my bike, drank some of my energy drink and ate an energy bar before warming up. I’m glad I followed other cyclists during my warm up, the industrial estate I was in was so easy to get lost in, every roundabout looked exactly the same!
I rolled up to the start line with about 10 minutes to spare before I started, when it was my turn to start I started to feel really nervous, there were people there with really expensive time trial bikes, and I thought I would be overtaken quite early.
I set out, I’m not sure how fast but I’m guessing about 28 – 30 mph, I nearly took a wrong turn, but luckily the route was sign-posted very well (a big thank you to whoever had that job!).
Soon after starting my heart rate was around 188bpm, I was worried about blowing up, but it felt (relatively) effortless, I kept nervously looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to be gaining on me, but I saw no one 
I overtook 2 people over the 10 mile course, and I lost a bit of time at roundabouts because I wasn’t familiar with the route. Once I was finished I wasn’t sure where to go, and ended up doing another lap just to cool down, luckily the time keeper was still there and he told me how to get back to HQ.
I waited around for a while until the results were written up, I was shocked when next to my name he wrote “24:19″!!
On my first time trial of the season, I was only 19 seconds of my target for the entire year! 
I will be going again next week (unless something major stops me), and I want to try and get sub-24, which I think is very possible, since I had to stop at a roundabout for a car, losing my about 5 seconds, and I had to slow down at a couple of roundabouts because I wasn’t sure where to go. I had also had a hard workout the day before, so I wasn’t fully rested.
One thing which surprised me, my heart rate was between 188 and 192 bpm for the whole event, and I wasn’t even suffering, my legs weren’t burning, my lungs weren’t burning, I didn’t feel like I wanted to throw up, it really didn’t feel like I was working that hard!
I couldn’t have done this without the help of Joe Friel’s “The Cyclist’s Training Bible
Well I’m off to do some intervals (if I can manage them, 3 hard days in a row!), check out his books, you will be surprised how much you will improve!
