My best TT last year and the one where I set all of my power PRs between 20-30 minutes, was when my Garmin Edge decided to crash just as I was on top of the ramp and they were counting me down (side note: standing on top of those things is both super cool and absolutely terrifying, good way of getting the HR up before you start!). My Garmin watch was also on and recording speed, power and HR, but on a not very user friendly screen which I hadn’t planned to use for anything other than recording purposes and couldn’t really see anyway from the TT position.
So I did the whole race by RPE and didn’t see any numbers until afterwards. And per my opening sentence, it went great, steady power throughout and the tank was pretty empty at the end. And that was for a ~14 mile TT, with a good amount of headwind to throw off RPE. So yes, it can be good to have some power targets in mind, but just getting out there and riding hard is a great way to learn what you’re capable of.
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I’ve always felt like such a strange Tester. I’ve never had this problem, if anything i go out too easy and do my best power at the end. Maybe because I have heard too many people’s advice over time about blowing up.
If you can train on the actual course, do so.
You’ll figure out a lot of stuff just by riding it a couple days a week.
FWIW, I never did an official TT race until a couple of years ago because I thought I really sucked at them. You just might surprise yourself!
Good luck! 
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Excellent. Love this reply. The 10 stages one
I feel I nearly need to do this in my first one just so I can report back with a comedy story.
I’d have thought aiming for 110% ftp for 5mile and 105% for 10 mile doesn’t seem unreasonable…
but again I haven’t been there yet…
Another reason to hit it hard:
a lot of endurance athletes approach performance as if all of the limitations are from the neck down. And if they are, then careful pacing is the way to do it. no question.
But what if important limitations also exist above the neck? In other words, you may never know how fast you can go, unless you really try. And yes, there is the risk of blowing up, but so be it. In my view, it’s worth it. This is a reason to do multiple races vs. just focusing all on one.
along these lines, one of my favorite workouts to do is to pick a (fairly) recent personal best over a duration, try to duplicate it over that duration, and then see how long I can keep going. It sucks, I do it infrequently, but you can surprise yourself.
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It’s way easier to blow up if you hit it from the gun. If you give yourself even a few mins of holding back to burn off some of your really top end power before you really go for it then you are much less likely to blow up.
It’s easy to do crazy wattage for 30-60 seconds when you are fresh and pay for it. But if you ride just below what you are capable of for the first few mins then when you try and go for it you won’t be doing that crazy power by accident.
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