00:33:49

Today's time of 33 minutes, 49 seconds is my new personal record for the Targhee hill climb. Two weeks from tommorrow we line up for the official Targhee Hill Climb Time Trial so today's self-timed trial was encouraging. In the 2006 Hill Climb I did a time of 00:34:19 and I feel as if I went out way too fast. I tested a new pacing strategy today and I am happy with the way it worked out. I will tweak it slightly for the real deal in two weeks and hopefully shave a bit more time off. Road time trials are not usually my thing but this one takes place right outside my front door, gets a huge local turnout, and is a really fun event.

Conditions definitely factor into this time trial as well. It was a bit breezy today so I am sure it helped me in some places but hurt me in others. I definitely felt the breeze in my face on a couple of the long uphill straightaways.

Another reason for the self-time trail is to get a current heart rate zone profile. I will take the data and plug it into Joe Friel's HR formula to come up with a current HR profile. If I understand his formula correctly, he recommends taking the numbers from the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute time. I hit the Lap button on my Polar a little over the 15 minute mark so that I would have a "Lap Summary" of the final 20 minutes. (Actually my Lap Summary is only 18 minutes, I should have hit it sooner, Doh!)

Here's what the numbers look like:

HR Average for entire ride = 175
HR Max = 185
HR average, 1st 15 minutes = 170
HR average, next 18 minutes = 179