Wandi 40km bike time trial

Two weeks on and I have another bike time trial. The weather in the past few days have been absolutely hot! I started my 4.5 hour ride yesterday just before 6am, went down the Freeway South bike path. It was pretty cool at first - just under 20 degrees, but soon after I made the turnaround, the temperature must have rose about 15 degrees and another 5 an hour later. It didn't help that there was a slight headwind on the way back. My legs were pretty empty towards the end of the ride, the return journey took me 5 minutes longer.

So come this morning, race day, I wasn't sure how well my legs have recovered. I had a late seeded start time of 8.32am. I planned to drop Li-Ann off at UWA on the way, but the roads were closed for the BRW Corporate Triathlon, so I took a detour to South Perth instead, where she could work on her laptop at the cafe while I had my ride.

I got to the race start with about 20 minutes to spare, quickly collected my number bib and timing chip from the registration. Luckily the rubber band for the timing chip was more flexible today, otherwise it always takes me ages to fit them on! It was also the State 40km ITT Championships, so many were in their skin tight time trial gear and disc wheels. I avoided using my aero helmet and disc wheel as I didn't want to attract unnecessary attention, quite often I end up in the bottom half of the results list!

A quick warm up and soon, it was time to go. The course is just under 10.2km and we go through it 4 times, making it a total of 40.9km. The winds were blowing from a North East direction, not very strong, but enough to pose a challenge. Plus there is a slight incline in that section of the course, which breaks the rhythm a bit. But that section is only about 3kms, and soon we'll be back in the tailwinds again.

The thing with time trials, is I always use the first lap as a gauge of what times to target for each lap. I did the first one in 17 minutes and I tried to keep it under 17 minutes from thereon. A pleasant surprise was the average speed kept above 36kph throughout, which exceeds my 35.5kph at Herne Hill two weeks ago. Coming into the last lap, I grit my teeth and just mashed the big gears, and passed the finish line in 1:07:48, an average speed of 36.2kph - a new PB for me!

Totally stoked with my results and can't wait to do another race. I'll be down for the Hillary's Sprint tri in two weeks. It's short races like these, all between 1 to 2 hours, that go a long way in keeping my progress and confidence in check, without smashing your body too much and leaving it ready to get back into training quickly.

P/S - Someone I met passed away during the week after a long battle with cancer. Her name is Yeoh, I met her at Ironman Malaysia 2010. She was there to support us, a nice and bubbly lady. Very sad news. Yeoh, may you rest in peace.