The Icebreaker Time Trial in Auburn, WA is the traditional kick off to the Pacific NW racing season. It’s a good early season fitness test and an opportunity to see friends on other teams that you may not have seen since last year. It’s a 10 mile flat TT on country roads (5 miles out, turnaround and return the same way) with riders going off at 30 second intervals. This means you always have both a target up ahead to try to chase down and/or someone bearing down on you from behind to keep you motivated.
I decided this year to view it as an opportunity to do an FTP test on my regular road bike as I wanted to try holding a specific power target with my power meter for the duration. This meant that I wouldn’t be as fast as I would be on a dedicated TT bike but would have more useful data to check my fitness level. (I wasn’t going to be in contention at this level, Masters Cat 1/2/3, regardless of what type of bike I rode in any case).
In this regard the Time Trial was a success, I was aiming to average 280w over the 10 miles and ended up averaging 279w. According to Strava this brings my current FTP estimate to 270w (or 3.5W/KG). My target for this year is to get my FTP up to 290 W and drop 10 pounds which will get me to the 4.0 W/KG number which I think I’ll need to be truly competitive at the Cat 3 level. That said it’s just a number and I’ve certainly won races in the past against people with higher FTPs than me.
This year we caught a break in the variable weather that had been with us all week and had near perfect conditions.
I drove down with a car load of supporters; my mum, Ashley and the boys. Susan was away for the weekend and Caitlin opted out for a quiet day at home.
My team were out in force and we had the tent set up for our warm-up.
Then it was off to the start for a 9:26 start time.
I caught the rider ahead of me a couple miles in to the time trial but was in turn caught by the rider behind me shortly after the turnaround.
And then ~26 minutes later it was all over
A great start to the season and such fun to have Ashley, my mum and the boys along to experience it with me.
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