12 hour power

 Still pretty impressed with myself for ending up not only doing one 12 but several and setting a new club record in the process....


Following on from previous post I have been thinking about what sort of power I will pace at.


I did a tryout on our 10TT course a few nights ago. Conditions were not very helpful with a strong headwind out and tailwind back. Ended up averaging 36kph for 234W/246NW.

Also tried using calculator here: http://bikecalculator.com/wattsMetric.html which reckoned that 34kph should take 195W on the drops and 240W on the hoods. (Aerobar would be 160W but I will not be using one for first attempt for reasons I will go into shortly).

Based on above 2 bits of info I reckon I will need to average somewhere in the region of 220W or so. This is 10w short of my "endurance" zone so is in the right sort of place. Also taking a look at my normal power curve:



My longest ride was my chase of 5000m climbing last year in France. Here I averaged 216NW for 9:30. This is short of target but that is not really a typical day as it was more of a hard tour than a race. This year on the Highclere I averaged 240NW for 7 hours and for the Marmotte 235 NW for 7:30. Extrapolating these as above gives me a guesstimated 12 hour power of between 230 and 215W. So pretty much dead on what I will need to achieve to do the 12 hours at above 20mph.

I will do a few more trials and see what results....

A new challenge - 12 hours on a bike

The Marmotte was my main target for this year and now I am suffering a bit from post goal gloom...what to do next.

Actually I already had an inkling from a conversation back on our club tour in France. Ours being the club it is the topic of time trialling had come up at some point or other (not sure why) including 12 hours. This are rarities and our senior mens club record (247 miles) is a bit special for a couple of reasons: it was set back in 1977 (not quite as old as the woman's which dates back to 1964!) and the record for a junior is actually more (255 miles).

Struck me that the 247 miles does not seem so far if you think of it as just being a bit more than 20mph. The problem is the 12 hours bit. However have done day long rides before and reckon I might be able to cope with doing 12 hours non-stop.

Only one way to find out so I have entered an event on 17th August. Just happens to be the National Championships so will be interesting.

Got some good advice that will need a helper to feed and encourage me so I have roped in Master Miff to come along as well..