EDCA 100

One night in Norwich...one night in Norwich !

I travelled down last night and stayed in a B&B so that I could be up early for my 6.09 start for my first ever 100m time trial event.

I managed to get there on time, however, the start was delayed by half an hour due to there being some mist in places on the A11, however we were soon told by the organiser that we were good to go !

I had a couple of miles to do a mini warm up, before heading down an entry ramp onto the A11 then along into a layby to await my 6.39 start time.

The course for the day was four loops of the A11 taking in a 13 mile stretch. For each of the laps I had an average speed plan, and hoped to complete the 100m below 4hrs 54 which I believed at the time to be age standard :

1) 26.051m - ave 22mph
2) 52.102m - ave 21mph
3) 78.153m - ave 20mph
4) 100m - ave 19mph

The plan was to restart my Garmin at the end of each lap so that I could accurately keep on top of things !

Well, the first half of the first lap was slow and when I made the turn I was averaging only 19.8mph, however, the next stretch had a little breeze behind me and I managed to push on and bring that up to over 23mph. Turn again though into the breeze and the first 26 miles had been completed in 22.8mph.

2nd lap then, and probably on reflection the hardest lap, I felt tired already and my brain was telling me to quit ( this happens a lot in my time trials and I think its my 'you're not good enough to be here' part of my personality trying to break out !). The second loop averaged 21.8mph but had been laborious, and I didn't enjoy it one bit - also the dual carriageway was getting busy and some of the traffic had been a little too close for my liking.

So 3rd lap, target speed 20mph, confidence low - guess what happened next.....

that's right, I got faster somehow and my confidence came back and I felt a lot better - that 3rd lap averaged 22.4mph, which left me just 22 miles to the finish !

That last lap was great ! I didn't mind that caravans were trying to wipe me out, or that I was continually overtaken - I rode my fastest lap of the day (after 78miles !!) and kept an average of 23.1mph ! I was so happy at the finish and my time was 4.30.13 which smashed my target for the day, and subsequently better than VTTA age standard of 4.34 !

Happy Days :-)