I’ve found VI Jesus…
I met Las Vegas EN’er Erik Sandhu at Encanto Park, the start of the official EN/LA Mafia IM Race Rehearsal Course, at 7am. By the time we got ready and I briefed him on the route, and clipped in, it was about 7:25, enough time for the winds to pick up. I was actually glad, as it was good practice to hold my watts into a wind.
FT these days is 300w, plan was for an IF of .75 and VI of ~1.03, yielding 225w Pnorm and about 216w Pavg. My last RR, with FTP of ~290w, I think, was 217w Pnorm and 209w Pavg for a 5:04-05, so this would be a faster effort. However my plan was to cap my watts at 215w for the first 1:30, then dial in goal watts of 225-230.
I had a pretty strong headwind all the down the bike path, ~33 miles to seal beach. Watts for the first 1:30 were 210w/206w for a VI of 1.02. I didn’t really care, as 210w Pnorm was good enough. At 90′ I felt like I hadn’t even ridden the bike. When I turned left on the coast toward Huntington Beach and the Santa Anna Trial, the wind really picked up. There is a wide open stretch of coast for about 15′ that I usually do at 24-26mph. Today was more like 19-20mph. Again, excellent practice of the discipline of sitting on the watts and ignoring the wind. I actually backed off my target watts by about 10w, as I figured all the headwinds would keep me on the course longer than I had planed (I turned 56 at 2:36 vs 2:33-32 like I usually do) so I need to back off to keep my TSS in check.
Left turn on the Santa Anna trail and inland to mile 56. SMOKIN’ fast tailwind. Gotta dig silence and 27-28mph but it only lasted about 9 miles. 56, time to flip it, WHAMM, headwind again. No worries, sit on the watts, stay low, good practice.
Right turn on the coast, and into a sweet tail/crosswind from about 8pm. I swept up a group of roadies, at the front and very comfortable at 225-230w and 26-27mph. Then a wide open section between Huntington and Seal Beach, where the wind got me 28-30mph. Right turn on the Santa Anna trail and more tailwind. Payback time. All of the tailwind stuff was, again, good practice in keeping the watts up with a tailwind, but, at the same time, hard to quibble about 25mph and off the watts vs 26-27mph and the watts. I could see that I was likely going to finish very close to my normal time, but my low IF at this point would make for a tasty TSS score when I finished.
About 20 degrees cooler than my last RR on the path so I wasn’t completely wiggin’. I told Erik at the start of the ride that I’ve developed a bit of a phycosis (?) with this bike path. Eight…years…Anyway, aside from a good bit of tightness in my hips and hip flexors, everything felt fine. In fact, I really had to hold back the last 20 miles, telling myself I was having a great ride and needed to consolidate things.
Final RR
0-56: 2:35, 215w Pnorm, 210w Pvg, .715 IF, 1.03 VI, 132.5 TSS
56-112: 2:28, 218w Pnorm, 212w Pavg, .727 IF, 1.03 VI, 130.5 TSS
Total: 5:03:40, 216w Pnorm, 211w Pavg, .721 IF, 263 TSS (sweet!), 1.03 VI.
I decided to skip the brick run, running 7-8 miles tonight on sorta fresh legs vs tight hips and hip flexors. In the last month, the bike and run volume has made me very stiff and creaky. Things just…ache, a lot. I decided that getting that stuff fixed is more important than a six mile run off the bike. I’m also not going to race the Oly I had planned for tomorrow, going for a ride with Sawiris and his GF instead, running in the evening. After that…I’m done. Time to rest, stretch, stretch some more, and watch what I eat.
I say I found VI Jeezus because when I got home I compared this ride to my file for IMCDA’05:
5:08, 225w Pnorm, 205w Pavg, VI 1.08.
I didn’t really track my FTP back then as tightly as I do now, but I figure I was at about 290-295w, with gives me a TSS between 290 and 305. I had some cramping issues in the last 8 miles of the run. My run wasn’t nearly as solid then as it is now.
Anyway, in this race I went 5w “slower” than in this race rehearsal (Pavg of ’05 = 5w lower than this RR) but, because of my higher VI, I made myself 6w more tired in the race. (Pnorm of ’05 = 9w higher than this RR). It’s very cool to see Pnorm and Pavg on the Ergomo and know that by keeping the numbers very close, you’re moving yourself around the course very well but only making yourself fractionally more tired. Very powerful to know that pretty much anyone riding my Pavg will have higher VI, therefore making themselves more tired than I am.
Granted, this is a flat course but the 65-70 miles of headwind made it challenging to hold a low VI. My mission for June 22 is now to set the EN Standard for VI Goodness on the IMCDA course 
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