Icknield RC Charity '10' 14th September 2024

This event was to be my penultimate time trial of 2024, but it turned out to be the last one as the invitation event on 22nd September was cancelled. It was billed as 'preference for slower than 22 minutes', and as my LTS was 21:57, it was a narrow squeak to get in (many thanks to the organiser on that front). I think that after all 22:00 and slower entries were accepted, the remaining places were filled from fastest to slowest, which would normally have left me in a gap between the two sets of entries. Anyway, I got a ride so that was OK.

As usual, I rode out to the event, about 23 miles. This always makes for a good warmup, and with the added excitement that a mechanical such as a puncture would likely cause me to miss my start! No misadventures, and I had enough time to collect my thoughts before riding up to the start line.

Before the event, I had high hopes of improving upon my 21:57. I was feeling pretty good having embarked on a new training scheme; the weather was nice - warm and sunny with a steady 13mph breeze. Unfortunately I seemed to lack a bit of focus on keeping the effort up. Of course, the 'gift hill' half way round always causes a drift in average power, but from the foot of the hill to the second (and last) turn I found it heavy going into the headwind. And that, of course, would never be made up for by the tail wind from the turn to the finish.

I finished with 22:20, 63rd out of 110 riders in the Open section of the event. Full results here. Then, of course, a ride back home!

I'm now looking forward to the club hill climb in early October, then no more races until the New Year's Day '10'. Other than that I plan to continue evaluating athletica.ai through the coming months.

Here is the data plot (click the image to see a larger version).