Monday, April 6, 2009

Conquer the Canal TT, Tabata Style

John Gray and myself represented the Virginia Beach Wheelmen at the Conquer the Canal TT. It was John's first TT of this short of a distance, and I was planning on trying something different. Since I am not a very good time trialist, I figured I would use this race as a test of the tabata intervals.

So I started my race and settled in. At the 2-minute mark I started my intervals. My intervals were 20 seconds with 10 seconds rest. I would go hard and accelerate for the 20 seconds. Then shift to one easier gear and and spin at a higher cadence for the 10 seconds. My speed was only dropping 0.5-1.0 mph during the 10 second rest phase.

I was able to maintain this until the 20 minute mark. At that point my legs were getting tired and so I was dropping too much during the rest phase and barely catching back up during the acceleration phase. So at that point I just tried to settle in and ride hard.

My goal was sub 29 minutes. In the two years prior I had done a 31:31 and 31:41 (last year's 31:41 was when the course was 12.7 miles instead). So a goal of sub 29 was still significant improvement for me.

I crossed the line in 29:04. So close. But it was great training. I may try this again for one of the PTL. We'll see.

Picture above was taken by BJ Samual. That's me and John waiting for results.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

so let me get this straight, you PR'd a TT while doing tabata intervals? Awesomeness