Another Tuesday, another VTTA Zwift time trial.
Aead of this time trial, I decided to splurge some of the 40+ million drops I'd accumulated in Zwift and buy the best frame and wheel combination available. At least as suggested by Zwift Insider. Armed with a (virtually) shiny new (virtual) cadex TT frame with (virtual) DT Swiss wheels, I entered the fourth in the eight event VTTA series.
Recently I'd become interested to see how the power reported by my ageing Tacx Neo smart trainer (first generation) compares with my Assioma pedals (i have the dual set). My initial investigations involved fitting the Assiomas to the bike mounted on the turbo and comparing the reported power by eye. This seemed to have a significant different at least at some power levers, so I felt some further investigations were merited.
In this, my third event in the VTTA 10 mile Zwift TT series, I tried to maintain a steady power. I also tried ride this as I normally do road TTs - that is, at a very low cadence. This worked marginally - I seem to have improved by a piffling 4 seconds! At this rate I may have cracked 24 minutes by the end of the 8 events!
Just before embarking on my warmup, I figured out why I couldn't reach top gear - it was a problem with the placement of the outer gear housing. In retrospect, being able to access the two smallest cogs was not helpful!
I came across intervals.icu a couple of years ago, via an article written about 2021 Olympic road race winner Anna Keisenhofer. In the article she noted the complex and adaptable graphics that intervals.icu delivers, based on data drawn in from a number of sources.
If I was a little disappointed at the outcome of my first effort at Zwift time trial racing last week, I did at least pace myself a bit better than I did in event #2. This was held on the same course as event #1, the pan-flat Tempus Fugit course. After a short delay occasioned by an unexpected Zwift update on the Apple TV, I set out to spin through a warm-up ride.
I’ve had a fairly heavy training load over the last week, so maybe I was left a bit jaded. However, the principal failing this evening was a that I didn’t keep a consistent power level through the event. Starting too hard was just the start. I lacked any kind of serious motivation, and repeatedly felt like I just wanted to stop. In fact there’s a surprising number of pauses in the record of the ride (see below).
I've been using Zwift regularly since April 2020, when I was building back from being an 'early adopter' of Covid-19. In all that time, I've not raced in Zwift, and I've only very occasionally ridden with friends on Zwift.
Until now.
Part 3 of this series is somewhat delayed by Christmas and associated shenanigans such as the traditional Christmas Cold, which really flattened me for a couple of weeks.
In Part 1 I described the hardware I use for cycle training indoors. In Part 2 I’ll describe the principal software package I use for indoor training, TrainerRoad. Part 3 will cover the other software I use, and Part4 the software I use for monitoring my progress (with some hardware comments).
There's a wide variety of apps out there for use with smart trainers. For some of these I'll only give a brief description in Part 3, while others I'll keep my comments very brief as I haven't used them extensively enough to form a valuable opinion.
This is the first in a short series of posts in which I discuss my approach to training for cycle time trials. I find road cycling to be unsuitable for structured training sessions other than extended endurance sessions, due to a combination of climbs and descents (albeit pretty small around here), junctions, traffic lights and of course motor traffic. The exception to that would be the evening 10 mile time trials the club offers through the season, which provided an opportunity for riding at a high sustained pace for 20+ minutes.
In part 1, I’ll give a bit of background to the kit I use.
In which I do yet another bout of TT bike fettling, this time to address the front end clutter.
Some months ago, I’d bought a secondhand 3T Aduro base bar (the same as came with the P5-Six). The original intention had been to replace the base bar on the P5. Unfortunately the four bolts holding the low extension/armpad mount to the replacement base bar were themselves seized. This appears to be a bit of a problem with these bars - my P5 has a set of Aduro bars in the low position, and one of the four screws holding the stem top plate was seized and I was never able to extract it.
In which I suffer a series of bike crises before even leaving the house, and have a lacklustre performance.
So as usual I started getting set up about an hour before I needed to set out for Astwood. When I came to pump the tyre up on the P5 TT bike, I found that the front wouldn't get up to my desired pressure, then the rear disk wouldn't stay inflated (I think because the valve core came a little loose). So I switched to the P3.
So it will come as no surprise that 2020 was the weirdest cycling year since I came back to the sport in 1990.
I started in reasonably good form, considering the drop in motivation I had experienced through the autumn of 2019 and into winter. I’d continued a lot of travelling, with monthly trips to Edinburgh - though in training terms these weren’t too disruptive since I’m able to set up a turbo trainer there. I did an OK effort at the New Year’s Day ’10’, and settled down to try and ramp up the training for the opening event of my 2020 season proper, the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up ’25’ in March.
2021 looked like it’d go the same way as 2020, with massive levels of infection, illness and death following the foolish decision by our pathetic and incompetent Government to grandstand over "not cancelling Christmas". However, things did settle a bit, and by mid-April we felt able to start running our 2021 series of club time trials.
We planned how to do this in a Covid-safe way, taking the following measures:
As I think I noted in one of the rare posts here this year, plans to ride the Duo Normand in 2019 were initially thwarted by a date clash, but ultimately the organisers rescheduled the event to 15th September (not, I think, in response to our inability to attend!) which meant that all systems were go. The main report is built using Microsoft Sway - you can either read it via this link: 2019 Duo Normand, or via the embedded version below. The four-way arrow icon will expand the Sway.
So far this year, my racing has been characterised by lack-lustre performances, where I actually managed to complete a race. On the bright side, the recent change of date for the Duo Normand time trial in September now means that Team Grumpy can once again turn out. This gives a really good late season target for us!
The season kicked off with a club event on the Astwood circuit. Unfortunately it was so windy that I packed on safety grounds after a mile or so.
We approached the 2018 Duo Normand with considerable interest, as there would be a new course used. Grumpy Bob had visited the course on a low intensity tandem trundle round at the end of August. But riding it on the TT bikes would offer a better idea of how the course might play out.
As per usual, as soon as weather forecasts became available on XC weather, we started looking ahead to 23rd September to get some kind of idea of what the conditions would be on the day, bearing in mid the lack of accuracy of longer term weather forecasts.
It was with mounting horror that we saw the predictions for strong winds. By the 17th September, we were looking at 28mph wind with 48mph gusts.
This was Team Grumpy's 13th ride at the Duo Normand - as you'll see in the report, the event was marred by tragedy in the race. The report is written using Microsoft Sway, here's the direct link if the embedded version doesn't work on your platform.
I’d entered this event on the back of a recent 55:40 at the Finsbury Park CC ’25’ on the F1B/25 - I hoped to do a decent ride on a quick course. Of course, after Alex Dowsett’s storming ride on the E2/25 earlier this year, the course is very popular, and it wasn’t a huge surprise not to make the startsheet. On the other hand, I’d ticked the ‘Reserve’ option, and so I ended up as 8th reserve. The day before the event, with the weather forecast looking decidedly iffy, I was slotted in the field in place of number 120. Probably the only occasion I can recall riding #120! I travelled over to the event with James, one of the newer NBRC members (he’s also rather quick at time trials).
After signing on (and in James’ case, borrowing a front skewer!), we drove to nearer the start to get set up and ‘warm up’. I thought the wind was going to be a bit of a headache - it was going to be pretty much a head wind on the way out, and the question was really how twitchy would it make the steering. Here’s a screen grab from the very excellent MyWindsock.com showing the conditions for the event.
Left to my own devices for the weekend, I decided to ride the 22 or so miles out to the Bossard Wheelers ’10’, held on the F11/10 course out by Tring. I had a slight delay while I tried to persuade my Garmin Edge 520 to start up beyond the opening splash screen. In the end, I set off with it in my pocket, while I used the Garmin Edge Touring to give me basic data. The 520 popped into life a few miles down the road. Other than that, the ride out to the race HQ in Aston Clinton was rather nice - it was misty and cool on departure, warming up as I went.
I arrived with plenty of time to get changed into my skinsuit, eat a banana and ensure the Garmin 520 was now playing ball properly. As I rode off for a warmup, the promised rain began to fall, big raindrops that had quite a cooling effect. Fortunately, the rain had stopped by the time I lined up at the start, and with only the lightest of breeze, I was hopeful of a good ride. After a spot of banter with Mary (timekeeper) and Richard (pusher off), I launched myself off down the slip road and onto the A41. The F11/10 isn't a course I've ridden much - two prior outings - so I was playing it by ear a bit. To begin with, the road surface is quite rough, but after a bit it becomes quite smooth and I'm sure I speeded up there.