Tonight was fun! And tough. I was still a little sore from yesterday, and tired thanks to catching up on sleep, but that only really affected me when I was sitting around and warming up.
We started off with Flying 100s, which I did on 99" and then 92", to get an idea for the difference. And the difference? Well, not much. Maximums of 56.3 at 120 on 99, 56.1 at 129 on 92. On first blush, looking at the shape of the graphs (by distance, not time) it might appear that the peak is rather more vertiginous for the 99" effort than for the 92" effort, but that's just an artefact of the total distance travelled - the actual entry plus 100m follows a very similar profile - peak speed just coming out of the first bend, speed drop of about 2km/hr for a sustained speed along the straight of about 54km/hr, and then the effort ends coming in to the next bend.
Even if you compare those two to my flying 200 of a bit over a week ago (which was on 92") the profile is similar (though top speed was a bit higher at 57.1) including the speed drop in the last 100m! Still, I don't feel like I'm jumping quite hard enough, even though I'm not trying to give it 100% at that point, because I have to last the distance. Say, maybe 95% for a F100, 90% for a F200. Not sure if that's what I should actually be doing though! Top speed of 56ish km/hr is too low though - even if I was not hitting the entry as hard so as to maintain speed, an average of 56km/hr only gives me a F200 time of 12.85s or so. Still getting tyre slip too - I've got some new tyres to put on which should hopefully be grippier, and just keep trying to get my position right accelerating out of the saddle.
I was pretty tired after that, and a bit concerned about the MACs and windout to come, but I was right when I said that I actually enjoy them - I was tired, but they didn't destroy me. I didn't do any of them perfectly though - I hit the roller on all of them, which may be okay, but it disrupts the rhythm. Especially coming around the bend to the point where the motorbike jumps and you have to respond to catch it. So I was a little slow there, though not too bad, but I did the same thing again coming around to the same point, where the bike accelerates again - except this time, I simply forgot that it was going to happen so I actually had to jump again rather than just accelerate in the slipstream. Which left me a little exposed. Not too bad, but stuff I need to work on. 62.2/143 and ?/141 (on 92") are reasonable results though - a good 4-5km/hr more than 3 weeks ago.
The windout was supposed to be on 82", but although I now have a 16T, my chain wasn't long enough to get it on, so I had to go for 86" on the 15T. Although again my form wasn't that great - touching the roller, not maintaining a very smooth line - I can't complain too much. I let the motorbike get away on the last straight, but I still managed a top of 60.5/149 and held my speed down the straight pretty well. Again, a good 5km/hr and 11RPM higher than 3 weeks ago.
So actually, now that I look properly at the stats and graphs and comparisons and so on, I'm quite happy with how things are going. It's a bit like losing weight, I guess, in that random variation (a brush of the roller, moment's inattention, whatever) can easily account for 2-3km/hr difference, and the improvement is incremental - and lower than the random variation. So you really need to step back a bit and say - hey, look, that's 5km/hr faster than only three weeks ago! Which is significant (though not as significant as it appears - 5 weeks ago I hit 59.1, only 1.4km/hr slower) as it confirms that yes, improvement is being made. Slowly, but it's real. The problem is that now I want to take all of my data, put it in a table and do actual statistical analysis of it. But I'm going to resist that because it's not even remotely worthwhile. This blog is already excessive analysis! Just so long as I record the information, reflect upon what I'm doing and use it for motivation. And let Carl know what I'm doing and how I feel about it, so that he can masterfully coach me towards perfection. Or, erm, something.
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