Pros: Bruxelles Palais Royal to Brussel Atomium, 27.6km, Team Time Trial

Me: 5 x (2:30 @ 90%, :30 @ 110%)

A Team Time Trial is basically the whole team riding in single file, with the guy on the front doing lots of work and the rest sheltering behind in his draft. The guy on the front rotates off after a set interval and rejoins the line at the back, and so it goes with each team member rotating through to the front position multiple times until the finish line.

Given there’s only me in this lark, to mimic the pros’ efforts I opted for 30 seconds at 110% of threshold to simulate the time on the front, then 90% of threshold to simulate the “rest” portion, repeated five times for a total of 15 minutes. Jumbo-Visma won the stage in 28:57 (avg. 57.2 kmh!) so 15 minutes is reasonable for me.

Woke up feeling a bit sluggish this morning, despite not staying up to watch the stage last night. HRV (Heart Rate Variability) was low too, which can be an indicator of tiredness or oncoming illness, so macro-dosed some Vitamin C just in case (yeah, placebo :-)

Session went OK - no issues, though looking at my heart rate compared to the pros, I probably should have set the efforts a bit harder.

Weight: 92.8kg CTL: 30.3