Saturday May 10 was the annual individual time trial in Granby, Quebec. A 19.5 kilometer rectangular course where the wind was moderate at about 25km/hour

The Opus/Powerwats team had exceptional results in both the Master B and Master A field.

In the B's, Eric Provost finished first with an exceptional time of 24:51, which put him in 10th place among a strong cat 1 field that included Dominique Rollin from Toyota-United (1st at 24:04), and Francois Parisien from Symmetrics Cycling (2nd at 24:10). Stephane Lebeau finished 4th, and Richard Pelletier completed the top 5. So in the B's, we had 3 riders in the top 5.

The story is similar in the A's. David Albert took first, Carl Dessurault took third, and I was sandwiched in the middle. So that made it a 1-2-3 sweep for the team.

Carl couldn't make it for the picture, so Michel Courval took his place. Michel also had an excellent time trial taken 6th place.

The race

The course was a flat rectangular loop, with the longest stretches being direct headwind or direct tailwind. So we started in the south direction, with a tailwind. Time trialing is about pacing, so there were two strategies being whispered among the racers - hold back in the first tailwind stretch and keep some juice for the headwind, or, take advantage of the tailwind and go hard at the start of the race to gain as much time as possible. I don't think it even needs to be that complicated. When I TT, I try to be careful in the first 2-3 minutes because it is very easy to go too hard, and be in anaerobic effort. When that happens, then you need to recover slowing you down, before you find your right threshold pace. Other than that, whether it is a tailwind or a headwind, the idea is just to ride on your threshold. I don't use a heart rate monitor nor do I use a power meter, but I'm pretty good at feeling where my threshold is. A power meter or heart monitor is good if you are sure where your threshold is, but sometimes being a slave to numbers may prevent from going just a bit harder at a pace that you may actually be able to sustain.

For the next two weeks I'm in Alaska for work and vacation, so I'll be posting back in a couple weeks. Take care.