[Raleigh]

:”( Ok, I am out of my depth. I have signed up for my cycling clubs ten mile Time Trial, having never done any trialling against time. I have no idea what training to do, bike to use, time to aim for, bike set up to deploy, what to wear… AGHHHH

I have got two bikes, both of which I am very familiar and comfortable with/on. One, a standard road bike which I use almost everyday, and another a Fixed wheel (or flippy floppy SS) bike which oddly enough has an aero bar set up.

I really want to impress the senior members of the club, and being the only junior member, I think that I already have that classification wrapped up. In terms of training Times, I have to go to that place everyday (School), including Saturday mornings, so realistically I can train three nights a week as well as Sundays.

Oh yeah, and the event is in two weeks…

Topic

[Simon E]

Riding drops is ‘old school’,
Riding drops is ‘old school’, nothing wrong with that 🙂 Anyway, I’m sure you will impress the older club members just by being prepared to have a go. You’ve done it once, so now you have a time to beat.

A few suggestions: try not to go too hard for the first mile or so, otherwise you’ll spend the next 3 trying to recover. Try to maintain a consistent output once up to speed, regardless of the wind etc. Focus your mind on putting power through the pedals, controlling your breathing and pedalling speed. Keep your body low, try not to grip the bars too tight or tense up, and *always* look where you’re going.

A suggestion I read on another forum and now do while I’m racing is to keep asking yourself:
“Am I pressing the pedals?”
“Am I pressing the pedals?”
“Am I pressing the pedals?”

For training, at this stage I’d say just ride your bike. If you want you could do some intervals – shortish bursts at the level of effort you race at, with decent rests (spinning the pedals gently in a low gear) in between. I do 4 repeats of 2 miles hard, 2 miles easy.

But don’t think too much about it at this stage. I don’t want to sound patronising but when I was your age I just used to ride full tilt to school and back etc and it worked well. It’s meant to be fun in the end 🙂

[stealth]

Good on yer!
I rode TT’s on
Good on yer!
I rode TT’s on drops for a couple of years, call it “athlete”, they’ll be impressed!
It really doesn’t matter what you ride as you are only really criding against yourself, the course and the conditions.
As for tactics I normally try to kill myself on they way out, kill myself a bit more on the way back and then kill myself before the finish. I feel much better about the ride 1/2 hour after I finish!!!!!
Good luck & keep it up!

[PhilWalker]

have done two in the last few
have done two in the last few weeks with my newly formed local club, and its one of the best steps I have taken since getting a road bike 3 months ago.

I pushed myself much harder than I ever have before, and the last one was a fairly flat 25, I did 1:10:49. Im no junior at 42, so was really happy with that!

Well done mate, an keep it up, its a bug, and I love it! B-)

[Gkam84]

It all depends on the course
It all depends on the course for the wind benefit, But if it was all flat, i would have pushed normal when the wind was on my back because its going to give you a help anyways and then save a bit knowing you would be going into the wind, so you still have enough to get home and no more

But on another not, around 20mph over 10 mile in difficult conditions is decent going for an under 16, nice one, keep it up

[Raleigh]

Well, as you all know, last
Well, as you all know, last night was certainly rainy, but I still went out. The youngest rider on the day, the next youngest being only about thirty years older than me, I thought that I had a good chance.

Final time: 31:15

According to the marshals I was unlucky with the traffic, and that the {de}acceleration cost me around 40 seconds.

It was so rainy that I was wind screen wiping every 10 seconds or so, and I didn’t push to hard for fear of losing braking traction!

1 DNF and a late withdrawal rendered me in third place (out of 5), but as the only rider under 16, I definitely won the youth cat. B-)

In terms of pacing, the wind was with me for the first half, so I went hard with it, and slower against it, but was this the right thing to do? 😕

[Swirly]

As said above it’s just a
As said above it’s just a race against yourself (also against any mates of a similar ability of course), the big advantage of your first is you’ll set a pb which is always nice. I’m not massively into training but some useful advice is know the course this will help you know when to push it and where you might be able to recover, not that there will be much recovering on a 10 mile TT, and lines/speeds to go round bends. On the day make sure you’ve warmed up well so you can be at full power from the start and if you don’t feel like throwing up when you cross the line you’ve not pushed it hard enough. Be prepared for lots of old blokes doing odd stretches and such like, if they say anything to you just stare into the distance and mutter something about it being the “race of truth”

Kit-wise it might depend on your club, ours is fairly informal although with a lot of people who race at a high level so it varies from full on TT set ups (bikes, disc wheels, aero lids and suits etc) to people doing it on their normal bikes in normal kit. As it’s just you against the clock it’s not a massive deal, make sure you don’t slipstream anyone though (admittedly this is quite hard as if you catch or get caught there will be a pretty big speed differential).

On my first one the worst part was being held in place by the starter. Now it’s just the fact he makes the same joke about having not dropped anyone … yet.

[Ben Burns]

I’ve been thinking about
I’ve been thinking about doing some TTs but as I only have a run-of-the mill road bike was put off by it…now I’m thinking the opposite!
Let us know how it goes…

[dave atkinson]

Don’t worry about it too
Don’t worry about it too much. You’re only racing yourself, and anything you do will be a personal best. Let us know how you get on!

Aero bars will save you heaps of time over drops, even over a ten. They’re the single best aero modification you can make. So if your fixed bike has them it might be your best bet, unless they’re easily swapped to your geared bike. I’ll wager you’ll need to run a bigger gear than you currently have on your fixer though: is the course flat?

Training wise you want to think about short, high-intensity efforts. If you have a turbo or rollers, 2×20″ sessions are good, I also know people that swear by Tabata sessions (Google it). If not, hill reps, preferably sat down up a long, draggy sort of hill rather than standing up a really steep one.

[Author]

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