The Twenty Kilometer Time Trial

After the hassles in the past two weeks I hope I am back on track. The Time Trial went much better than I thought it would. I was very apprehensive. It was nice and warm with no wind and still sunny. There were twenty in my group and we started of thirty seconds after each other. As usual I started off too fast and my HR went up very quickly. Too quickly in fact. It was soon up to over 150. Now the strange thing is that my max HR is supposed to be 155 according to my reconing and tests that I have done on myself. Not scientific of course.

After five ks. I was still going well with my HR now hovering around 159, my legs felt strong and my breathing not overtaxed. I did in fact push a bit harder and the HR went up to 162 and I was still below anarobic threshold(91%MHR). Didn't go into the red. So what is happening? At the end of the TT the HR came down quite quickly. All I can say is that my training is working. The hill intervals have made my legs pretty strong, but my heart had too work harder to supply the oxygen to my blood to convey it to my legs. Because of my lower blood count the heart had to work extra hard to make up for the deficiency.... Or,because I have a bit of a leaky valve the heart is not as efficient as it should be and had to work harder. But that does not account for such a high HR which should have been in the mid 150's. Maybe I would have gone faster but I was reluctant to put my heart into overdrive as I had done a couple of weeks back.

I finished low down but some were old enough to be my children, grand children or evengreat grandchildren!?? and out of the twenty or so riding in my group I was only a bit over 4 mins behind the leader. Av.cadence was 84 but was actually more as I only checked after a slow ride back to the car.

Next week twenty Ks. round the lake. Not Taupo.