Coburg CC - Evolution Cycles IRTT Series - Round Two. Feb 26th 2012.

Third TT for the year already. 24km from Cottlesbridge to Strathewan. Out and back. This is only a club TT, so rock up on the day and just ride hard? Yeah right. Lovelock had me in his sights chasing revenge from Round #1. I had some pacing and form demons I had to slay.

This isn't just a club TT. This is war in skinsuits!




Race prep:

• Course recon two weeks ago on the road bike. Mapping distance, elevation, corners, power. Getting familiar with the course landmarks, lines around corners, and road surface...... And guess who I spotted doing the same? The enemy. Lovelock.

• I created a course segment on Strava (linky) and uploaded my time. This was subsequently smashed by a few others, including Stephen Lane on his TT bike knocking 4 minutes off. (The Strava segment is a little shorter than the official course to stop the stationary start/auto pause problem.)
• More study of the course profile to work out the best pacing to use.
• Back out to the course a week later on the TT bike for recon #2. Time was around 6 minutes faster (also 50W more power). Course study worked.

Both attempts done with a 15km/h southerly. The hot 25km/h northerly on race day was something we all had to factor in at the last minute.

The roller coaster.

After arriving early enough for a good warm-up, I was again chasing Lovelock 30 seconds up the road. Everything went pretty well. It was too hard to calculate the time gap at the turnaround. At 19kms in I could see the little whippet and calculate a rough time check, I was 10 seconds up. Same gap at 21.5kms and with only the final 2km downhill to the line coming, I knew it'd be another close one. It was.

Aero Category:
Pos  Name            Time  
1    Shane Miller    34.34
2    Jono Lovelock   34.46 +0:12
3    Gerard Donnelly 36.46 +2:12
4    Thomas Donald   38.20 +3:46
5    Stephen Lane    38.39 +4:05
6    Daniel Hopper   38.45 +4:11
7    Richard Harvey  38.47 +4:13
8    Jose Areta      39.03 +4:29
9    Stephen Bick    39.16 +4:42
10   Wayne Gebert    40.24 +5:50
11   James Love      42.40 +8:06
Full Results Linky

The battle has been won. The war is never over.

Round #3 this Sunday at Humevale. 2kms flat, 7km up. The preparation for that? I stopped eating two weeks ago. :)

Pics thanks to Mrs Rod Upton:

SLane looking good while getting Shiv'ed by a bad pacing strategy.

Me... looking very un-aero at the top of the last climb.

Rod Upton and his non-aero category mates slogging up the final climb.

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Random Visuals

Giant Celtic Racing Team TT helmet vs Hilux modification. Non UCI legal! 

lol!