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Posted Sunday, January 22, 2006 by Jim Teague
OK, so maybe you read the first installment, and are even thinking of enrolling in an actual time trial event that isn’t required as part of a stage race? Alright, maybe I’m pushing it a little, but at least you started reading the second installment. That’s a start. But for those who are going to give it a try, I’m timing this series of articles to culminate a couple of weeks before the first Washington time trial of the season, the Zoka Ice Breaker Time Trial, coming up in early March.
Last time I talked about the raw ingredients: attitude, equipment, and genes. As with most events, training and/or technique can help offset deficiencies you may have in any of those ingredients. The information I’m about to impart comes from a variety of sources: Matt Hill (my coach), Barry Roitblat, some publications, and some are actually things I learned through my own personal experience. But before going into the specifics of what to do and how to do it, let’s talk about what the actual goal is, performance-wise.
Steady Eddie
If you were to look back on your heart rate data for a perfectly executed time trial on a flat course, you’d see that the graph is almost completely flat, too. Further, you’d observe that your average heart rate for the TT would be either right at your lactate threshold, or one beat below. Compare that to any other bike racing event, where your heart rate is all over the map. It will spike like crazy during attacks, sprints, and hard climbs, but then drop to low Zone 2 during the times when the pack is noodling along or descending.
To get the fastest possible time in a time trial, you have to coax your body to perform as closely as possible to your lactate threshold (LT), and stay there, without going over. When you go above LT, your seconds are numbered, because your body will not perform long at that level before forcing a recovery. The end result is a disappointing time, because the penalty of the enforced recovery will more than offset any time you gained with your fast start.
In the first installment, I made the bold statement that if you felt like time trialing was the most painful racing event, you were probably doing it wrong. Here’s what I meant by that: staying at your LT is really hard work, but if it’s all that painful, you’re probably going above LT, and trying to keep up that level of performance past the point when your body gives you the equivalent of an overdraft notice at the oxygen bank. That battle is excruciatingly painful, not to mention futile. You will pay up, eventually.
Lactate Threshold (LT), and How to Control It
This is all great, but there are two major prerequisites:
- knowing what your lactate threshold (LT) is, and…
- keeping it there for the duration of the time trial
I’m not going to go into how you determine your LT. Even if you haven’t derived it by some formal method, most of us have at least a ballpark estimate.
Keeping it there requires practice, and keeping it there for the duration requires specific training. Ideally, you’d have a series of time trial events, but if not, then you should set yourself up some kind of time trial course. It should be at least five miles long, relatively flat with few interruptions (like stop signs and traffic lights), and ideally, protected from the wind. I realize this is quite a challenge unless you live out in Black Diamond, but I find that heading southbound on East Lake Sammamish in Redmond works out pretty well. From the backside entrance of Marymoor Park, you can just get in five miles before a hill.
You’ll want to do this course frequently, and as close to race pace as possible. Watch your heart rate (HR), and try to anticipate it’s movement. The delay factor with heart rate monitors can make this a challenge. Practice this frequently, and pay close attention to the signs your body gives you as you approach, hit, and exceed LT. One thing I notice frequently when going over LT is “dry mouth”, because I’m breathing through my mouth so hard that it dries out.
As you learn the signs that help you pull back on the reins in order to avoid going above your LT, try to rely less on the heart rate monitor. Check it from time to time, but if you want to be the best time trialist you can be, you will need to know these things by feel. Think about the efforts you can put out in training versus a race, and you’ll realize that you can go much harder in a race than you ever can in training. HR numbers will vary considerably for any number of reasons: how tired or rested you are, your motivation for the event, stress, etc. So try to lessen your dependence on the HR monitor as much as possible.
Many people will stress out about feeling like they are not going hard enough. Instead, I think you ought to spend more time worrying about going too hard. Think about it: you actually can go harder, right? But if you do, you’ll pay. So you should feel like you could go harder – the trick is to know where the “hard enough” line is. If you’re worried about not going hard enough, then try holding back for the first half of the time trial, and if you still feel like you can go faster after that, then dial up the power in the second half, but gradually. It’s easiest to fall into the trap of going too hard at the beginning of the race, since that’s when adrenaline is the highest. Wait until halfway to get your engine well-warmed-up, and after a little bit of reality has set in. Then see how it goes, but monitor those warning signs.
Technique
I think about a time trial as being composed of several separate phases:
· the warmup
· the start
· the first mile
· hitting steady state
· the turnaround
· closing the final distance to the finish line
I’ll talk about each of these individually below.
The Warmup
If you know me, you’ll know I make a joke about how little I warm up before a road race. “Hey, Jim, when are you going to warm up?” to which I’ll respond with something like “I just did, changing clothes.” But when it comes to a time trial, keep your distance after I’ve “gone dark” in the middle of my warmup. I take the warmup for a time trial very, very seriously.
Since everyone’s warmup preferences and requirements are different, I won’t say much more than that: take it seriously. But I will say don’t overdo it. Don’t look at Lance Armstrong’s time trial warmup regimen and duplicate it: with all due respect, you’re not Lance. Don’t wipe yourself out so much with your warmup that you’re spent when it counts.
The Start
The start is critical to your performance, but I don’t mean it in terms of getting up to speed within 3 nanoseconds. I mean it in terms of not getting too carried away with the excitement, and going out too fast. So don’t start in a bonecrunching 56x11, start in a lower gear that won’t wreck your legs getting up to speed. And don’t hyperventilate within 200 meters. Bring it up to speed fast, but losing 1.1 seconds here because of a more gradual start is not critical in a race of 30 minutes or an hour: you’ll be faster overall if you don’t put yourself in the hole before you’re 100 meters off the line.
Make sure you’re clipped in, and stand up and focus down the road as the count gets down to about 3. Don’t wait until they say “go” to stand up and start your TT. It’s an orderly countdown, not a random start like in track & field, so you can anticipate.
The First Mile
As you get up to speed, and find the right gear, it’s time to go through your mental checklist:
- How do I feel?
- How’s my position, do I need to scoot up or back? Are my knees tucked in? Am I in a good aero position?
- Am I going too hard? Should I dial it back? Can I maintain this?
- How’s my cadence and gearing? Too high? Too low?
Don’t start obsessing about someone catching you, you’ll freak out and overdo it. Don’t think about anyone but you and your bike.
The other thing to do is to check to make sure your speedometer or HRM is working. Not that there’s much you can do about it, but see if enough functions are working that you can derive some useful data. But primarily, if it’s not working, let it go and ride your TT. Don’t stress out about it, and don’t reach down and try to wiggle it into submission or something. Just get on with it.
Hitting Steady State
After the first mile, you’ve got a much better idea of how you’re doing. By now you know where your cadence and gearing is going to go today. Refocus on your position, your form, and settling in for the long haul. Find today’s “performance groove” and get into it. Check your HRM (if it’s working), just for the information. If you’re 10 beats above LT, then make a mental note to go back and keep practicing on detecting the warning signs of going out too fast!
Keep up your mental checks about “am I going too fast?”, and if it helps motivate you, maybe you can now either focus on the rider ahead, or staying ahead of the person who started behind you. If your speedometer is working, remind yourself to “Focus” every mile.
The Turnaround
I mention this in order to voice my opinion that turnaround execution is over-emphasized. The standard advice is to slow a little in advance of the turnaround, take it wide, then stand up to re-accelerate. And this is rocket science?
Just get around the cone upright. I think it’s much better to have a turnaround that is 1 or 2 seconds slow, than to take it hot and go down, losing 15 seconds or more.
Closing the Final Distance
Sometime well past the halfway point, as you are in the final distance approaching the finish, it’s time to dial up the power.
This is it. Time to give it everything now. Yes, you’ll absolutely go above LT, but you can recover as long as you want after you cross the line. The trick is determining where to start this final ramp-up. Should it be 1 mile out? Half a mile? But wherever you think the remaining distance is right, kick it up a notch. Then again. Then again. At 200 meters, stand up and sprint, but ONLY if you think you will increase your speed. If you’re 110% wasted, then you’ll probably actually slow down, so just stay smooth, down and aero, and punch through.
Congratulations, you’re finished. I guess, come to think of it, it actually was kind of painful at the end. But now, as you’re trash-talking with your friends about how awful that just was, join in: “Yeah, you’re right about that…”. But there’s a difference this time. You may well have had a faster time than they did.
Next time: Race Day Tips, optimized for preparing for the Zoka Ice Breaker Time Trial.
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