Well, thank god that is over!
I knew that the front straight was uphill and that coming into turn one would be difficult, I just didn’t realize how difficult it would be. To get the stats out of the way. We finished the seven laps around Charlotte Motor Speedway in 00:32:15.67 for an average speed of 18.6 miles per hour. We came in dead last in the tandem category.
Now for the excuses. It was windy coming up the front straight, especially into turn one. The official results list a 6 mph wind but it sure seemed like it was a bit more at the first turn. the whole track was uphill! Since my neck surgery last summer I was not able to ride the entire second half of last year. In 2010 I only had 226 miles up until the time of the TT. I am 20 pounds heavier than this time last year. Nicole has only ridden about 60 miles all year. OK, that should be enough excuses for the moment.
The laps were surprising consistent. I mean within a few seconds of each other. Bear in mind that lap 1 and 7 are a bit shorter since you start and finish on the pit road. Lap 1 was way too hot. Heart pounding at 170+ bpm (99% of my calculated MHR). It took three whole laps before I could get the heart rate down below 95% MHR. The back straight was not as fast as I thought it could be, but at the same time we know that as a tandem team we lose much more time slowing during ascents than we ever gain speeding up while descending. So our strategy, if you can call it that, was to not push into the red zone to try to make up all the time we lost climbing into turn 1. We might have to rethink that just a bit.
Richard took a few pictures of us and as soon as I get a chance to see them we will post an image or two here.
| Time | Distance | Split time | Split distance | Split speed | Speed chg. last | Speed vs avg. | Elev. chg. |
| 04:03 | 1.39 | 4:03 | 1.39 | 20.6 | 2.27 | -5 | |
| 08:28 | 2.81 | 4:25 | 1.42 | 19.3 | -1.35 | 0.91 | +1 |
| 13:13 | 4.23 | 4:45 | 1.41 | 17.8 | -1.43 | -0.52 | -1 |
| 18:01 | 5.64 | 4:48 | 1.41 | 17.6 | -0.25 | -0.77 | +1 |
| 22:46 | 7.05 | 4:44 | 1.41 | 17.9 | 0.28 | -0.49 | -1 |
| 27:29 | 8.46 | 4:43 | 1.41 | 17.9 | 0.03 | -0.45 | -4 |
| 32:07 | 9.85 | 4:37 | 1.39 | 18.1 | 0.19 | -0.26 | +3 |
We will be out in June to try it again. This next time I told Nicole that we are going to go through all of Coach Troy’s Time Trial Spinnerval DVD before we embarrass ourselves again. Any way you look at it we had a wonderful time as well as getting a chance to meet and chat with a few other tandem cycling couples.
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