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| Elevation of the Cleves course |
The top performance of the year belongs to a genuine stud, John Murdock, who went 10.9% faster still at a time of 22:09, averaging 27.6 mph, whereas I averaged 24.6 mph.
Below is a summary of all the times posted this year. This includes all times by all riders, and therefore includes repeat performances of some riders, (usually the faster guys). See if you can spot the oddity with the data.
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| The orange line represents my performance Tuesday compared to all times of all riders this year. |
The oddity here is that there are a couple of plateaus near the faster times and these plateaus are broken at integer minutes-- that is, at the 23:00 mark, the 24:00 mark, the 25:00 mark, etc. So, my performance Tuesday crossed a critical barrier of the 25:00 mark. If you had to guess, based on human psychology, you would expect times to cluster around the upper limit of each plateau-- that is, you'd find many more performances in the territory of 24:57, 24:58, 24:59 than you would near 24:02, 24:03. Because, if you can ride as fast as 24:02, than surely you'd have the mental motivation to cross into the 23:00 zone. BUT...as it turns out, this intuition doesn't hold up for the very fastest times. Not only is the 24:00 plateau crossed, but it's smashed with a time of 23:59. Similarly, the 23:00 barrier is smashed with a time of 22:59. Perhaps these dudes are stuck in their own personal plateaus or represent the owners of an important technology gap.
The very fastest riders (in the first and second plateau zones) have several tech features in common --1) time trial bikes (aerobars), 2) aero helmets, 3) disc wheel(s), and 4) shoe covers. Of course, they deserve credit for stellar athletic performance.
LESSONS LEARNED
I'm going to ride that course a couple more times to gather more data. Undoubtedly, some of my performance gains came strictly from my new time trial bike-- better positioning, better knee pinching, more aero. What I find interesting (and daunting) is that in order for me to double my speed from cruising around 12.3 mph to hauling ass at 24.6 mph, I have to quadruple the work to overcome the frictional forces of air. The force of air drag is proportional the square of the velocity. So, if I triple my speed from 10 mph to 30 mph, I have to do 9 times the work! This is a good reason to find a way for me and/or my bike to become more aerodynamic.
There is also room for plenty of fitness improvements, as well as tech improvements, but just as importantly, strategy improvements. I tried to catch my :30 man from the get-go. I almost had him about 3/4 in, but he pulled away on the last long flat, where I started petering out. I ended up only gaining 2 seconds on him. Next time, I will wear a heart rate monitor and race my own race and I'll use an odometer and try to leave some gas in the tank for the final long flat stretch and the uphill finish.
I did happen to wear my shoe covers and removed my water bottle from the aerobars, but I should have removed the water bottle from my down-tube since I didn't drink the whole ride. I'll also remove the gear bag from my seat post since there's no time to change a flat, but I figured I would want to leave some sort of room for improvement for the next race where I feel a little more optimized inside and out.
OTHER GOOD NEWS
After my tune up last week, my car's fuel efficiency went from 19mpg to 32.2mpg! This is terribly important when business trips have me routinely going to Toledo, Columbus, Dayton, hauling a car full of equipment for me energy audit work. I've already racked up 20,000 miles this year. Yuck!
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| I haven't unplugged from this grid, but it's a start. |
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