My first ITT

Yesterday marked the fist race of the season. The Indus "Moment of Truth" 20km Individual Time Trial hosted by our friends over at the Crankmasters Cycling Club.

This was my first ever endeavour at a pure bicycle time trial event so I wasn't sure what to expect.

I mean, no swim beforehand and no run afterwards??? What the...!!??



Apparently I need to make a modification to my P2C (moving the seat to the back 2nd position) to make it UCI legal so I brought out my Soloist for this race.

I arrived early, registered and got the #2 start position. Yikes!!

I honestly didn't know what to expect but I remembered some folks mentioning that in a TT you want to keep a high cadence (95 + rpm) so I started my race with this in mind.

First let me say a pure time trial cycling race is a VERY different event then the bike leg in a Triathlon. I fully didn't appreciate this difference until yesterday.

I seriously burned my lungs out yesterday! It was a lung.. and a gut buster!



The course was a 10km out and back. East then West so I knew we'd have strong Westerly winds to contend with on the return leg so I wanted to conserve my energy. I did the first 5km pretty conservatively.

I hit the 10km turn around at about the 16 min mark and felt pretty good. My legs (and lungs) weren't burning too badly then I hit the wind.

The 11-16km mark was brutal. My speed dropped right off to around 29-31km/h and my HR shot way up.. I was red lined all the way. Breathing became very laboured.. it actually hurt to breathe!

By the 17km mark I just wanted it to be over! LOL The pain was that bad. I put my head down and just gutted it out until the end. I probably pushed a bit (well ok a lot!) too hard as I wanted to puke my guts out at the end. I made sure to do a decent cool down and hydrated and ate at the car.

Looking back it was an absolute blast! I wasn't entirely comfortable on my Soloist (not set up at all for TT'ing) but I did manage to come in under my goal of 35 min and clocked a ~ 34:35.

Met some really cool people from the Crankmasters, saw some SaWeet TT bikes and I finally got to met some of my fellow Speed Theory team mates.

It's going to be a great experience riding with Trev and the other guys on the team.

~la