Yesterday was the Ryton 2up TT - an 18 minute time trial where riders go out in pairs. I didn’t ride in it. I had plenty of excuses - I didn’t have my membership in time to sign up, I don’t have a time trial bike, I’m not fit enough, I didn’t have a partner - but the truth is, I didn’t fancy it.
After watching it, part of me wished I’d taken part just for the experience. I have since been convinced by Roger, Danny, Alan, Annabel and a couple of friends on Facebook to give a club 10 a try, so I decided “what the hell”. My training started today - I decided to ride yesterday’s Ryton TT course.
Riding out from Ponteland I was spinning a high gear and the bike was fizzing along at 22-25 miles an hour and I felt good. It felt like there was a slight tail wind but then at times the wind seemed to take a nasty sideswipe at me. I continued fizzing on at a nice high pace until the course started to get slightly lumpy around about where I was taking photos yesterday.
The hills are always going to be my biggest problem when carrying around the extra weight, so I made a positive effort to push up the hills and take it slightly easier on the flats. By the time I passed Gubeon golf course I knew I’d gone out to quick.
The sharp left bend that signaled the portion going back into Belsay greeted me with what felt like a barrier of head wind and my pace dropped down to 13-14mph. The section between the turn and Belsay itself was by far the hardest part, and apart from the quite technical downhill sections around Whalton village I had clearly lost most of my time on this stretch.
At Belsay I felt the head wind subside and the remaining 6 or so miles from Belsay to Ponteland I clearly would have benefited from aero bars and an aero helmet (and weighing about 5 stone less) but nonetheless I powered as hard as I could hitting 29mph at one point.
The finish line had been taken away but roughly around the finish line had been I looked down to see the computer just turning over to 58 minutes. It’s not too bad, but the slowest Vag pairing took 54.43 so I’m 4 minutes down on them!
Looking at how the ride I went I know exactly where my weaknesses lies:
Going uphill
Pacing myself
Increasing my lactate threshold
Losing weight
To be honest, none of this is news to me. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it now!