Anyway, the course was an out-and-back course which turned out to be 20km, having been specified as a 30km TT. This is the same thing that happened a couple of years back, so it didn't come as a surprise.
The profile is quite flat, with an uphill out bound leg and a downhill return. Wind conditions meant that the out leg would also be predominantly into a headwind/crosswind, and the return would have the wind behind us.I was hoping to have my SRM available for my TT bike, but it is not back from being serviced yet. That, along with getting some changes to the TT bike means that I had only managed to get onto the bike for one computrainer session, and one road session - not nearly enough.
Turns out that with the wind the way that it was, my Bontrager Aeolus 5.0 wheels with my powertap were fine for the conditions, so nothing lost.
I did manage to break the cardinal rule of TT - start on time! Our start times were brought forward 20min on the day, which disrupted my warmup plans quite a bit. Anyway, I went to the start ramp in time, and was told there were a few riders ahead of me still. So I quickly went to the toilet and to sort out my Garmin 705 pairing with my race wheels. Returned to the start and was waiting patiently went I was informed that my start time had gone 20sec ago!
Cursing myself, I hit the road quickly! The best thing about riding a TT with a power meter is controlling the adrenaline at the start and keeping a lid on the power! I focused on staying aerobic and got into a rhythm. Feeling a lot better on the bike than my previous ride.
I haven't done a test on the TT bike, so I was not sure what numbers I could sustain for 30min. I do know that I am not able to match my road bike numbers when in full TT position, so I started out at around 340w (I had done 370w for 38min in the Panarama TT a few weeks back on my road bike).
Then I started having problems with my Garmin CPU - which came lose and kept rotating on the bars! So I ended up fiddling with that a bit - not good when trying to keep a good position and go as fast as you can!
At the turnaround point I was feeling pretty good, and decided with a downhill tail wind I was going to really nail it. Taking a few seconds recovery every now and then would not impact my speed much. I managed to produce 13w more on the return leg.
Stats for the ride can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/r4dlmh
It is interesting to note that I did the same time in the return leg as Andrew Mclean (overall winner), showing the advantage a bigger rider has in a downhill tailwind situation.
This was good enough to get me second place in the race - with some confusion over the results as I was initially told I was third, but found out I was second at medal presentation! My official time also didn't quite match my powertap times so who knows??
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