Once again, I was back on the Astwood course, this time for two laps, for the Team MK open '20'. Team MK use a different start/finish combination than we do for our club events, starting just past the BikeBus cafe and finising right outside the BikeBus. This has the advantage that the BikeBus can be used as an event HQ (and their coffee is good!), but in my opinion it has the disadvantage that the climb into Astwood is located shortly after starting the time trial. 

Anyway, I rode up to the HQ with plenty of time to spare. Too much time, as it was really quite cold. Fortunately I'd made a last minute decision to bring some arm warmers. After a further spin up and down the road, I made my way to the start.

After a delightful warm spring morning, I think all of us lining up for this North Bucks Road Club evening '10' on the Astwood circuit course probably expected a nice warm evening. Unfortunately we were a bit disappointed as the temperature started falling quite quickly. I was quite glad I'd brought a warm jacket with me for the ride home.

Aside from the falling temperature, there was a distinct breeze which served to help me along the way down the A422 from Astwood to Chicheley and the first turn. Of course, there would be a downturn to that, but it's always good to get off the main road quickly. And aside from a double decker bus buffeting me, I had a pretty quck ride on this section.

I had high hopes for this time trial on the fast Brogborough course. Unfortunately, the weather featured a much stronger wind than I had expected - with some obvious (adverse) consequences! On the basis of the conditions when I left the house, and the forecast, I decided to ride with a deep section front wheel. We had 19 riders entered for the event, and I ended up not starting in my scheduled #7 spot, but as #20, having started the last dozen or so riders so that the timekeeper could get to the finish before the first riders. Accordingly, I was pretty cold by the time I started.

It was clearly going to be tough out to the turn. I'd not anticipated quite how strong the wind was, and my bike felt really quite unstable - dangerously so - coming down the start descent. And with that in the back of my mind I didn't really use the tribar extensions on the way ot to the turn. In fact, the headwind was considerably tougher than the graphic below - and with the gusts seemed to be wrenching my bike around.

After a spell of fine sunny and warm weather, this event took place on a windy and cold morning - conditions to which I'd become unaccustomed! As usual for events on the F11/10 course, I rode out to the HQ, a distance of about 24 miles (including a ride from the HQ to the start) - this was rather good as I mostly had a rising tailwind, and it offers an excellent warmup. I was a bit concerned about how strong the wind would be and its impact on my ride, as I had decided to ride my deep section front wheel.

I reached the HQ in good time, but by the time I rode up to the start, it seemed to be even colder. I decided to keep my woolly gloves on! The F11/10 runs along the A41 as it bypasses Tring and Aston Clinton. It has the notable feature of a descent that riders don't ride back up, so it is usually considered a fast course. But in my experience this depends quite a bit on the wind direction (though the top riders don't seem so badly affected). The course is also notable for pretty poor road surface, with much of it very rough. The organisers had noted several new pothols and flagged them up with fluorescent paint. As it turned out, this worked well.

36 hours before this event, it looked like we'd have to shift to a backup course owing to planned roadworks. But only 5h later, these had (remarkably conveniently) been pushed back by a week. So everything went pretty smoothly on a delightful sunny and warm evening with only the slightest wind.

I was feeling pretty good, and ahead of the race was hopeful I might get under 24 minutes. After the usual ride up to the meeting point and an extended warmup, I was on the line and ready to go. I had a pretty clear run, with the exception of a couple of timid drivers waiting behind a rider I caught quite early on. I know it always feels like time is ebbing away in these circumstances, but really I doubt it would have been enough to account for my place in this event.

Every so often, I'm motivated to test concordance between various sensors that connect to bike training devices. This is usually to confirm that there is good consistency between devices, usually power meters. This particular test aimed to evaluate some HR sensors and a couple of power meters. I wanted to compare the HR derived from my Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch (optical), a Polar Verity Sense armband HR sensor (optical), and my regular Polar H10 chest strap HR sensor. Over the years, I've found that Polar chest straps set the standard for HR measurement, and they are good tools for measuring heart rate variability (HRV) via the HRV4Training phone app. Unfortunately, I have been experiencing some skin irritation from from sweaty chest straps during indoor training, so I wanted to evaluate whether switching to one of the optical sensors might help.

As a secondary aim, I was interested to see how my current trainer, a Garmin Neo 3M, compared with a pair of Assioma Favero dual sided power meter pedals.

My 2025 time trial season continued with this club event on the F5d/10 Stoke Hammond course. This is a reasonably quick course, with about 6 miles of dual carriageway. Initial weather forecasts were for light rain (and very heavy rain very early on that day) but, though the early heavy rain showed up on schedule, we were spared the early evening rain. Wind was fairly light, but it wasn't very warm, and indeed was quite chilly by the time we were done and dusted.

We'd offered to roll over entries from the New Year's Day event, which we'd abandoned owing to spectacularly windy conditions, and several riders took up that offer. So this evening we had 12 riders, largely comprising the usual suspects, but with four riders from the Leighton Buzzard Tri Club.

In the days leading up to this opening event in the North Bucks Road Club's evening TT series, the weather forecast was looking pretty grim with cold and wet conditions predicted. On the day however, this all turned round and we had dry and sunny conditions, but with a pretty strong and blustery wind that promised a hard ride back from the turn. I chose to ride my P5 TT bike, but I swapped out its 90mm deep rim front wheel for an H3 trispoke as I thought that might be a bit better in the blustery conditions.

I rode out to the meeting point quite early so that I'd have time to check things out on the course. I rode down to the first roundabout and back, which was enough to confirm that it would be quick to the turn and a tough ride back - indeed I found it difficult to use the aero extensions due to the head wind. Still, the strength of the wind had been falling through the afternoon, so maybe things would be a bit easier than I expected.

I'd entered the N&DCA '10' on the F15/10 Brogborough course quite early, and as the date of the event drew close, the weather forecast was pretty dismal, with persistent rain forecast for the whole afternoon. Consequently I felt a bit apprehensive. However, on the day the conditions turned out to be near ideal with warm sunshine and a gentle sidewind throughout.

I never really know how my first time trial in a while is likely to go, and to be frank I'd have been happy with a sub-24 minute ride. I'd done a few Zwift time trials, but I find them rather tedious and surprisingly hard compared to a real life time trial. Anyway, the HQ for this course is only about 4 minutes bike ride for me, and as per usual I went down to the HQ, signed on, chatted with a few people and ridden up to near the start far too early. I rode a few loops round Brogborough then went to hang around at the start for a bit.

In which I end up riding a solo 2-up

The Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25 mile time trial is often my season opening event. It involves a trip over to South Wales to visit a former club mate and regular Team Grumpy 2-up time trial partner. The usual pattern is to drive over on Friday, eat a massive Indian takeaway; test ride the bikes and have a moderate walk on Saturday; the event itself on Sunday; drive home on Monday.

After I decided to return to the TrainerRoad fold, I was looking forward to another stab at a VTTA Zwift '10'. Unfortunately, I had to pack this as I was a bit unwell, with a mild cold affecting my breathing. This only became evident after my warmup and about halfway through the TT. I thought it prudent to stop. The next day, I felt quite woozy so I also took tthat as a rest day. Of course, this was a peculiar, if mild, cold that came and went. Fortunately it didn't materially affect my preparation fof my first open event of 2025, the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25'.

This event is the usual starter for the season, and historically I've ridden with my regular 2-up partner - and 2025 is no exception. This year has the added motivation of the first edition of the Duo Normand since it was blown off the calendar by Covid-19. The event itself has been reduced from 25 miles to 15 miles owing to roadworks on the opening stretch of dual carriageway. That's not too bad, really, as the remaining section is on a more 'sporting' road. Here's Team Grumpy looking good in the 2024 edition of the Port Talbot Wheelers event, in which we (well actually, I) punctured just a few minutes after starting.

My initial 6 month subscription to Athletica.ai was nearing the end, and I was keen to rationalise my various virtual cycling/coaching subscriptions. At the time, I had active subscriptions to Zwift, Rouvy and to TrainerRoad. I’ve been using TrainerRoad for the longest period, and only started with Zwift in 2020 while in Covid lockdown.  I also subscribe quarterly to intervals.icu for its superior data analysis capabilities. In the past I tried FulGaz (which was bought by Ironman, and now by Rouvy) for a year or so.

You can probably tell that I enjoy trying out new virtual cycling and training apps, but these aren’t particularly cheap if you have several of them, so I periodically prune some of these back.

After last week's debacle where my bike collapsed under me into a salty mixture of iron oxide and sweat, bringing my time trial to an abrupt end after 10km, I was uncertain how today's event would go. Because I'd been generously gifted an old road bike by a club mate - actually I already had this, but I was awaiting some 11-speed shifters from Ali-Express before mounting the bike on the trainer - I was able to get up and running again the following day, albeit on the 8-speed gearing the bike came with.

On the back of nearly a week of using this bike, I was aware of a slight gearing issue, where some gears occasionally jump slightly. I hoped this wouldn't be an issue. This week I took things pretty easy in the 48h ahead of the time trial. On Monday I just did an Athletica recovery session, and I didn't ride in the morning of the time trial. I planned out a 40 minute warmup routine, which consisted of the 20m ramp up, then a couple of higher power sets of 30s at 113% FTP followed by 2m30s at 95% FTP, separated by 4m at 69% FTP. Then a easy spin before my start time. 

I'd been somewhat concerned for some time about the state of the bike frame mounted on my Tacx Neo trainer - many years of heavy sweating had corroded it really badly. I had joked recently about it collapsing, and had obtained a replacement. But of course as I awaited parts to arrive, I hadn't set it up.

I completed a decent 40 minute warmup pretty well, though I'd noticed that the gears were sounding a bit rough, and occasionally the rear mech seemed to want to change on its own accord. Oh well, I thought, I have a look tomorrow. A few minutes before my scheduled start ay 19:04, I moved to the start pen and waited a few minutes to start.

So this was my third attempt at the VTTA 10 mile time trials on the Tempus Fugit course. Last week I went backwards with lower power, so I was feeling a bit apprehensive about this one - would I continue my backwards trend? On the plus side, I've been completing the Athletica workouts with a bit more gusto than over the past few weeks, and many of my physiological metrics have been going in the right direction. But still...

To recap, I have been finding it difficult to pace myself properly on these events, and this is something I need to work on. After a carefully planned warm up, I did start off quite well, controlling my pace and holding things steady for about 6 minutes before everything started falling apart. I finished with an average power of 236W - somewhat less than I'd be happy with, but about 8W higher than event 2 and 4W higher than event 1. My finishing time was 24:09, and in the AAT table, I came in 34th out of 57 riders.

You might have thought that after the debacle of last week's VTTA Zwift TT, I might have been able to do a bit better. Well, if you did, you were wrong.

Once again I rode like a bag of spanners, and in fact did a marginally worse ride than the week before.

The first of the VTTA Zwift time trial series was preceded by a 'test event' that I missed. So I came at it a bit cold, not having done a Zwift TT in nearly a year. The TT was on the nearly pan-flat Tempus Fugit course. This is really quite unrealistic as even on the flattest real life courses there are minor undulations and variations in wind resistance that make the ride a bit more variable than in a virtual world like Zwift.

Anyway, I made the most stupid error (especially given the decades of TT experience I have), and shot off at the start at a completely unsustainably power. Subsequently I was all over the place power-wise and faded really badly towards the end. I could see my average power dropping...I finished in 24:20 (I think), with an average power of 232W. Apparently this was good enough for 7th place on Age Adjusted Time (so I am told). Maybe the re weren't many VTTA members taking part!

I started using Zwift after recovering from my first (and so far only) bout of Covid at the outset of the first UK lockdown in spring 2020. At that time I was working from home and I settled into a routine of riding Zwift before and after each working day, with a significant impact on my fitness. I remained a home-worker until I retired in 2023, but I kept using Zwift along with some other virtual platforms after that.

For me, Zwift has generally been a bit of a solitary activity. I did try a couple of meet-ups with work colleagues, and took part in the VTTA Zwift time trial series last January, but really I'm just there on my own in the garage.

The New Years Day '10' is a regular event in the North Bucks Road Club calendar of events, and one that I am generally keen to turn out for. Unfortunately over the last few years, my attendance has been spotty to say the least. I ddn't ride in 2023 owing to a family emergency, and I didn't ride in 2024 owing to a hideous respiratory cold (not Covid, at least!).

One of the frequent problems with winter events it the likelihood of bad weather. This year was particularly bad, and while we were optimistic owing to the larger than usual number of entries (11, including a many from a local Triathlon club), as I was monitoring the forecast over the last week, as New Year's Day drew closer I was seeing rain, then sleet, then snow, then finally strong gusts of wind combined with heavy rain.

As usual I've gone into Christmas week with an eye on the club's New Years Day '10'. Also as usual, the travelling and generally trying to be sociable, has disrupted things along with not sleeping too well. The NYD '10' was one of the events that I set in Athletica.ai training plan as a target event, and it'll be the first real test of my fitness. I am still funneling workouts into TrainerRoad, and my AI estimated FTP has jumped a whapping 2W to 251W since I started with Athletica.ai. That might reflect better progress than it seems since having an increasing FTP in one's mid-60s could be rather good.

In other news, I added a second A race to my schedule, the Duo Normand, reinstated to the calendar for the first time since Covid did away with the 2020 edition. At least this event is on a Sunday and can be properly entered in the Athletica.ai calemdar, unlike events not on a weekend (almost all of the North Bucks Club events are on Wednesdays). This is actually pretty poor feature of Athletica.ai, but I suppose only a few mid-week events are likely to be key events in my season.