Falling Apart at Dunlap

This was my first time doing this TT and I was looking forward to it, but perhaps not too much since it was 30k and I haven't done any TT effort that long since our last Winter Series race. Arrived with plenty of time to scope out a good parking spot with shade, chat with friends and generally be able to take my time and not feel rushed.

While on the trainer I felt great. I've been tapering for this and Districts next week, and while tapering is something new for me (it makes me feel like a caged beast), I felt like I could conquer the course when I was warming up. My back had been bothering me for the past day after I pulled a small muscle on Saturday from bending down to pump up my tires, but with the heat of the day everything felt fine. The wind was up, but I decided to run the 1080 front anyways (more on that later).

My goal was to hit between 350-360 watts for the entire ride. I started out into the headwind and found myself having to throttle back my effort just a bit as it was easy to go too hard. Through the first left hand turn and now a long crosswind slog. I was finding that holding 350 was really starting to hurt.

After that stretch and the subsequent right turn, I knew it wasn't going to be my day. I glanced down at the powermeter and saw 290. Pretty disappointing! There was nothing I could do about it. I guess that's why they call it the race of truth.

At this point the 1-minute man behind me (Craig Roemer) passes me and we've got the tailwind section left. My power was able to come up into the 320 range for the last 10k, but my day was over by that time.

Overall it was a tough day. The wind was stronger than I thought and I should have gone with a less deep front wheel. I was fine with my pacing strategy, but in retrospect the middle 10k was were I fell apart and cracked. The first and last 10k were ok, but the power just wasn't there.

I have some theories about how my body is reacting during the taper period, and we'll see how they play out again next week at Districts. I have a hunch that I don't perform well when I'm so "fresh" and that I need more fatigue in my legs (perhaps a bit more volume and intensity than what I'm currently going through). I'm sticking with the current plan leading into Districts this year. Learning more about how I react to a taper is hopefully going to help me out more next year which is my real goal (2010 Districts TT).