Minimum altitude: 177 meters
Distance: 38 km
Slope Aspect: Various
Vertical Climbed: 168 meters (551 feet)
Vertical Descended: 164 meters
Rating: 1
10- and 25-mile time trials are the bread and butter of British amateur competitive cycling. Every week, events are held on mysteriously coded courses scattered around the country.
I decided to mark out a few courses of my own around where I live in France: a couple of sporting 10s, a very sporting 25 on which I managed 1h20, and a faster 10-mile course — out and back on a flat cycle path beside the Isère. I created them all in Strava. After almost breaking “evens” on one of the sporting courses, I decided it was time to tackle the fast one.
The outward leg was into the wind, with a very slight climb. I wanted to keep my heart rate around VT2, roughly 160 bpm, to avoid blowing up too early. In reality, there are not many km/h between VT1, VT2 and complete exhaustion.
I gradually got into the swing of things, although a few walkers may have wondered what all the hurry was about. The turnaround point is at the Le Cheylas reservoir, where there is a tight U-turn that almost brings you to a stop. Unfortunately, just as I arrived, someone had decided to sit on my wheel. Despite me signalling that I was about to turn, all I got in return was a vacant grin, so the whole turnaround was a bit more awkward than planned as I was half-expecting them to ride into the back of me.
The return leg was easier with the wind behind me, even though my heart rate was now creeping towards 170 bpm. By then I only had to hold the effort for another quarter of an hour or so. The finish came surprisingly quickly, and I stopped the clock at 28m16s. Back in the day, in my twenties, I was regularly riding 23-minute 10s and even managed a few 22-minute rides, all on a steel-framed road bike from the 1980s and 90s.
I was completely spent and had to potter home from Tencin, which was probably a good sign that I had left just about everything out on the road. The course record is 26m12s by a certain Thomas Berthoud. My 20-minute rolling average heart rate was 165.7 with LT2 set at 160 is substantial, and the 10-minute value of 168.5 near the end is exactly the kind of rise you’d expect from a well-paced maximal TT.
My only real regret is that I knew so little about physiology and pacing when I was racing seriously. I even had a Cateye heart-rate monitor with a chest strap in the 1990s, but there was far less information available about how to use the data properly. Looking back, I would have found all of this fascinating.
Warm, 28C with a wind from the north. Lots of debris (twigs) on the roads.
