Project 19

  That’s it, all done.

  2014 season over – what a relief!  Had hoped to have a crack at a fast 50 but struggling to shake off a bad cold so hung the wheels up early.

  A short but sweet season:

5 Open 10 mile TT’s

·         20:18

·         20:41

·         20:51

·         20:52

·         20:54

  2 Open 25 mile TT’s

• 53:07
• 52:13

  All seven rides quicker than last year’s PB’s. 44 seconds off the 10 PB, 97 secs off the 25.  Can’t be too cheesed off with that!!

 

This is my fave picture of me riding in 2014, taken by Louis Julian of GYCC during a Somerleyton 10 mile TT. Not a DC and not a pro photographer yet it's a great shot.

  So, what next? Well, I’ve been thinking long and hard about whether I can go any faster. I know I can go sub 52 mins in a 25 – I’d gone right out of my little purple patch of form a few weeks before I rode my 52:13, so that one is do-able.

  What about the 10 though? Hmmm….

  I had thought that the 20:18 was a complete freak of nature so was loathed to count that as a true measure of athletic ability on its own, so I took the mean of those five 10 mile times to get 20:43. The difference in speed between that and 19:59 is just a smidge over 1 mph. Doesn’t sound like a lot, does it, but that’s a significant increase in the amount of power to find / drag to reduce and I’m not sure I could do it.

  However, I’ve been quite geekily scientific and done a long breakdown of riders who have ridden the same events as me and have gone sub 20 this season in other events or have sub 20 minute PBs.

  This result is far more encouraging – I really am just 20 seconds or so short of a 19 minute ride on a perfect day on a fast course like the result on the F11/10 showed. I'm thinking that's about a 20 odd watt deficit. That is do-able, and I’ll tell you why I think so:

  For some reason things went pop (again) very early in the season. I’m convinced that my power was still on the way up when it happened. I had two absolutely terrifying turbo sessions where I couldn’t believe the amount of power I was producing. Those efforts on the road would have been epic. I just need to go back through my notes to find out how they happened.

  I also need to find out why I went pop in the first place.  I’m fairly sure that it was a mistake donating those two pints of blood over the winter – I think it left me with low levels of something and I couldn’t recuperate it.  Two years of coaxing my anaemic blood chemistry to somewhere near normal and I go and do something daft like that!  I won’t be doing it again – so much for Altruism!  Anyway, not as though A+ is rare or anything.

  I also got race fit incredibly quick. I went from winter slobitude to screaming fit in just six weeks thanks to short hard efforts on the turbo and nothing else. I’m wondering whether that is the right thing to do next year.

  The short sharp 20 min efforts did the trick and transformed my short distance timetrialling miraculously but burned me out very quickly.  So I’m thinking that I should try to hang on to a bit more fitness this winter so that my starting point isn’t quite so low and have a steadier build up. Not sure exactly how I’m going to do that yet AND have a decent rest at the same time but I’ll try a few things.  I'm currently thinking just 90 mins a week all in one hard ride (sunday) until xmas, then see how things are looking.

  I was close to forgetting about TT’ing and moving onto something else before this year’s improvements. Still feeling a bit jaded with it though – I really need a sharp target to focus on to maintain the drive to do it.

  So I thought about ‘Project 3:49’ for 100 miles or ‘Project 1:49’ for 50 miles etc but that seemed a bit too easy. So I’ve settled upon Project 19.

  Yes, I’m going to give it a crack in 2015.

  No, really.

  Bit of a long shot but with a few more watts, bit less drag, a tailwind all the way around etc, I could do it. In any case, a successful Project 19 pretty much automatically guarantees success in 25, 50 and 100 mile all time PB’s, so it’s a good place to start!!

  Not got any sort of plan at the moment, I’m still enjoying a nice few weeks off the bike to get rid of the last of this cold / cough / ebola whatever.  I’m going to research which equipment updates will save me the most watts within my stingy budget over the winter and address that first.

  I really hope I don’t end up regretting this! In a year’s time I’ll probably be really annoyed with myself for not walking away from Time Trialling on an all time high…