Zwift Biking
Table of Contents
Frr 2024 Tour Britania
Stage 1, ITT (16 km)
ITT; That is pain as in PAIN. Its the beauty and the beast, you are all alone with you thoughts, your lactic acid, your agony and not the least your breathing. If you go out to hard you will see other riders pass you at the end, if start to soft they pass you in the beginning. Nothing is more agonizing, watching the watts, BPM and other riders and the time, at the same time trying to stay mentally focused, push as hard as you can, but at the same time finding the right amount so that you don't pass the threshold. There is a thin red line in where you have to balance, if you push to hard you die both mentally and physically. But I will argue that the worst part is the mental game, you are so close to what your body can withstand that your brain constantly screams to slowdown. Those screams needs to be pushed aside, and you need to mentally tell yourself that this will end in a short while, just another couple of minutes. You try to find ways to trick your brain. "Just to end of this straight, then I can rest". After the straight , you try finding another short goal, and so it goes until there is nothing more, or you reach the goalline.
The worst part of the first stage is that you really don't know the other riders, they might be out of your league, or they are riders that you should beat. Trying to focus on your own ride is quite challanging especially if a rider you think you should beat passes you, trying to focus on you own ride and finding your own pace close to the limit of you potential. That is what this is all about. Withstanding the pain every second of the race.
My take
This is the first stage, I had a vision. The idea was simple, push as
hard as I can use both standing and sitting down, try make more power
uphill, get some rest down hill, dont care about other riders. I knew
it was an effort around 25 minutes (shortest race in FRR) but its a
max effort, no time to waste the more power I can output the faster I
will go, the better the time will be. My
weight is obviously to my disadvatage since this is a pretty flat 2
lap race, but there be hills enough later.
Out of the Pen, i tried to focus not go to hard, but still, it was much harder then my initial plan. I was standing up way to long and pushed way to hard. After a couple of minutes my Heart rate was showing that I need to sit down and have a couple of minutes to ease up abit. The first climb came way to quick, this is where i wanted to push, so again standing up pushing high watts, and the heart rate was racing again, but i knew that there is soon enough some downhill to rest. Rest is not right word, but I eased up somewhat down hill, and then sat down most of the time the remaining lap. I tried to start pushing again but i reached my limit, I really struggled up the hill the second time and to be fair , the second laps downhill was all about trying to recover, unfortunatly I was struggling I've passed my red line, just trying to stay alive the last part. Anyway, to conclude I was quite satisfied with the result I was hoping for average watt over 250. The result 249 is quite reasonable. I knew I would fall behind, this is not my cup of tea. Flat race ITT with 63 kg is unfortunatly somewhat problematic.