VTTA Zwift '10' 18/2/25 - no lessons learnt!

Another Tuesday, another Zwift 10 mile time trial organised by the VTTA.

After the debacle on 4th February, and the return to form on the 11th February, I had hopes of a (probably minor) incremental improvement. That didn't happen, and instead the result pointed to continued difficulties in pacing on a flat virtual time trial course.

I'd thought that I might have a little more in the tank at the end of the previous time trial, and accordingly I hoped to increase the average power in this event, perhaps looking at a 5W increase. Instead I found myself somewhat over-enthusiastic at the start, pushing rather too much power. Not massively so, but enough that I wasn't really going to exceed last week's performance. The graph below is a comparison between the two time trials (click to enlarge).

The thing that stands out to me is the higher heart rate in the first half of this week's time trial (the warmup was pretty much the same for both events), and that while the opening power level this week was more consistent, it was a little bit higher by abut 20W. I think that was enough to muck things up. Last week I saw very brief dips in power in the second half as I tried to relieve pressure on my right foot. This week, these were both more frequent and a little longer and probably reflect a combination of fatigue and discomfort.

The end result was 23:24, just a second slower and with the same average power. I'm hoping that next week I'll have a more balanced power distribution throughout and some improvement in the result.

So several things to address in next week's event, which is the penultimate race in the series. Ultimately I'd be interested to know how all this might translate into performance on the road. My first open event is a 2-up '25' a few days after the final event in the VTTA series. It's possible that if I can get a handle on power pacing my real life events will benefit.