Last Sunday I raced the relay triathlon in Alphen with two clubmates, one swim, one bike, one run, split across a team. My leg was the bike.
The venue was 20km from home, so the ride over doubled as my warm-up. Start gun for our wave went off at 10:55. Our swimmer had a strong leg, but we lost our timing chip somewhere along the way, which cost us time in transition. No point standing around sorting it out, so we were told to just go, and I went.
43km, three laps, and wind that had clearly read the course map before I did. Each lap came down to four straights: one dead tailwind, one crosswind strong enough to push you across the lane, and one straight into a proper headwind. No technical sections to manage, just power and wind, so I treated it as a glorified FTP test and rode close to all-out for the full 43km.
Splits: 57 minutes, 43.7 km/h average, 292W average, 167bpm average heart rate. That's a week after my first full-distance triathlon in Almere.
I handed off into T2 in first place. Our runner took it from there and brought the 10km home in around 38:40, and we crossed the line together to close out the day in first overall.
A good day, and a useful one. Taken on its own, that bike number would read as a drop off my FTP. But context matters here: this was outdoor, on a course where the tailwind straight let me coast rather than hold power evenly, and it came seven days after a full Ironman. Between the uneven power distribution from the wind and the residual load from Almere, I'm reading this as FTP holding steady rather than slipping.
Which means it's time to go put in the work to move it forward. Off-season starts now.
