Sunday, July 03, 2005

Tailwinds I win? Headwinds I lose

Today, in honor of yesterday's puny 19km individual time trial in the first stage of the 2005 Tour de France, and in preparation for my own individual 30km time trial coming up in 28 days (sandwiched between two 5K runs) I took Buttercup out for a little 30km time trial of our own.

I was hoping to get it in under an hour.

Ugh. That was not to be.

Going out was work, but I pushed hard for a 17.5 mph average. Not the 18.6+ mph I had hoped for. Coming back - where did that headwind come from? Even slower. MUCH slower at times. My loose left crank didn't help - time to get some work done on Buttercup.

Final time: 1:09:38 for 18.6 miles for a 16.0 mph average. That's my time to beat at Blackwater.

If I had ridden yesterday's 19km time trial in the Tour de France yesterday at that pace I would have finished in 44:12. That would be 18:41 behind the slowest finisher, Leonardo Piepoli of Italy on the Saunier Duval team, who finished in 25:31. Even he was 50 seconds behind the next slowest finisher. I'm going to be watching for Leonardo during the Tour. He's my man. :-)

2 comments:

Chris said...

Isn't that crazy? Even the slowest of the slow at the tour... the ones that have absolutely no chance at placing and probably just a slightly higher chance of finishing still would blow by all of us as if we were standing still. Incredible!

Congrats on your ride. Keep crankin' them pedals. The speed is sure to come! :)

tri-mama said...

Just keep building those leg muscles girl-all that head wind is a great investment towards the next race and the next... BTW do you like that Felt? It looks like a great bike, do you like how it handles? I'm in research stage right now for buying a tri bike-dang if that's not a lot of hours at the Y though :)