Aldergrove by the numbers (never let a time trialist get off the front with less than 15km to go!)

Jumped at the top of the small hill (entrance to parking lot) with 2.5 laps to go. Got 300m gap by the time I hit Zero ave, never saw the pack again :-)

They finished about 2-3 minutes after I did. The A's helped a bit by coming past the C's just after I got off and that probably helped confuse and confound them. I kept thinking I was about to get caught, sit up, and then it's a bunch of A's. First the break. The the main group. I actually had to play cat and mouse with their main group for most of a lap, pass them on the downhill ("neutral, single C break coming through") and then getting caught on the small hill, then pass them again, then get passed on the 272nd climb... Didn't take any advantage drafting wise but certainly they where a nice carrot to pace myself from.

My average speed wasn't that high actually, 34.6. Which was very close to the overall average for the C's to where I jumped. But in fact they had dropped down to about 33 for the preceding two laps. I was watching the average speed. We peaked at about 35.2kph at the end of lap 3, but then the overall average started falling. So I figured the main riders where starting to slow down. With 3 to go slowly started moving to the front, getting there at the bottom of the small climb. Got to the top of that about 4th or 5th wheel back, jumped and didn't look back until Zero.

Fast nights in the A-Group!

A nice set of races at the track tonight.... and because of other obligations I was nicely tapered not having been on the bike since Sunday.

The first race was a 30 lap Tempo, always good for a fast pace and tonight was no different. Average speed for the 30 laps was 49.3kph, with just under half - 14 laps / 3:20 minutes - averaging 50kph! Can't remember a race this fast. At least not one I was able finish.

I was on a 51x14, about 95.2" for racing after doing a solid 20 minute warmup on a 52x14 (97.1"). Since my form was good this felt very comfortable and I had no trouble hanging in even as the the pack speeds hit 52-55 and stayed well over 50 for extended periods.

Even my heartrate stayed well down, only hitting 182bpm for the final lap. Average for the race only 170bpm.

As always, as long as I can stay on top of the gear overall the bigger I go the better I can do. I'll continue with the weight program to see if I can continue to get raw strength up so that I can move up to the 52x14 for racing and maybe 53x14 (98.9") for training.

One side effect of the bigger gear is that it makes it more comfortable to get up off the seat for short efforts even when at speeds over 50kph. Typically leg speed makes it uncomfortable to push hard standing at much more than about 125 RPM. But on this size gear 50kph is about 120RPM and that I can do standing and get a nice jump.

In the second race, a 3x10 progressive points race the A's actually let me get over the top and attack with 3 laps to go.. they are a really polite bunch letting us old guys do some work at times.

Not that I did much... Jacob Schwingboth and a couple of others bridged back on to my wheel and went over me at the final sprint. Still it was fun. Someday I'll surprise them and stay away :-)

I'm playing with some of the new options in the online version of trainingpeaks. While heavily flash based the results are still quite nice and it is easy to make workouts available. See here for the tempo race and here for the progressive.

They also have hooked up with facebook and twitter and you can have your uploaded files automatically summarized and posted to either of them. This can be done either automatically or only for specific workouts. I'll play with posting them to twitter as I only have about 5 followers and as far as I can tell they are all some random people I don't know. They think they are following some other stuartlynne.