Dursley Road Club

Dursley Road Club has always had a strong time trailing side to the club. An individual time trial (ITT) is a road bicycle race in which cyclists race alone against the clock. There are also track-based time trials where riders compete in velodromes, and team time trials (TTT). ITT's are also referred to as "the race of truth", as winning depends only on each rider's strength, endurance and determination against the clock.

Starting times are at equal intervals, usually one or two minutes apart. The starting sequence is usually based on the finishing times in preceding races (or preceding stages in the case of a multi-stage race) with the highest ranked cyclist starting last. Starting later gives the racer the advantage of knowing what time they need to beat (and also makes the event more interesting to spectators). Competitors are not permitted to draft (ride in the slipstream) behind each other. Any help between riders is forbidden. The rider with the fastest time is declared the winner.

Most events are fixed distance, being 10,25,50 or 100 miles. There are also fixed time events -12 and 24 hours -with the objective being to ride the furthest you can. Courses are on public roads and are either'out and back', using a roundabout to turn halfway, or circuits with consecutive left turns. You can take part on any roadworthy bike except a recumbent.

The club events held on Thursday evenings through the season count towards the evening points series. The competition is open to all club members and the points are awarded as follows.

1st place           = 20 points
2nd place           = 19 points
3rd place            = 18 points
4th place            = 17 points
5th place            = 16 points
6th place            = 15 points
7th place            = 14 points
Etc etc

Please Note that all riders (juniors, seniors and vets) are eligible for the points award.

Together with the points competition, a veterans trophy is awarded based on an age related bonus points and added to the placement points as follows.

Age 40 - 44       = 2 points
Age 45 - 49       = 5 points
Age 50 - 54       = 8 points
Age 55 - 59       = 12 points
Age 60 plus      = 15 points.

It is important that the age section of the signing on form is completed so that correct points can be awarded. The vets bonus points are added to the placement points to give a vets total.

"if a Vet aged 53 finishes in 4th place, the points awarded would be 17 points plus 8 bonus points total 25"

The competition is based on the best 10 results during the season and trophies awarded accordingly.

Also, a trophy is awarded to the rider who achieves the best improvement during the series.This year for the first time we will be including the results from the inter-club event held in early June.

remember if you have achieved the standard already you can claim for a PB or a club record

You have to be 12 years of age or over
You can ride on any sort of bike (except, of course, a motorbike - let's not be daft!) so long as it's roadworthy, including a mountain bike
You don't have to be a member of a cycling club to ride in "Come and Try" club Time Trials. You do need to be a member of a club to ride in Open, Semi-Open or Association events. For further details click here.
You don't need any special clothing, but baggy trousers might get caught in your chain (and will certainly slow you down!)
If you are a Junior ( Under 18 or your 18th birthday is between 1st Jan & 31st December this year) you need to wear a Protective Hardshell Helmet. If you are under 18, your parents will have to sign a consent form, allowing you to compete

Your first race will probably be 10 miles. It's not really that far and should take you less than 45 minutes to complete. Riders are set off at 1 minute intervals and timed to see how long it takes them to complete the course. It doesn't matter who crosses the finish line first, the winner is the rider who records the shortest time.

When you ride another event over the same distance, you should aim to beat the time you did in your first race.

Some races have handicaps, in which slower riders are given a time-allowance which is subtracted from their final time. Thus, fast and slow riders can compete almost fairly together. It's usually the slower riders that win handicap prizes!

It doesn't matter what your fitness level is, whether you're 22 or 82, male or female. If you can ride 10 miles on a public road then you can ride a time trial. It's not like a road race, where if you fall off the pack your race is over. Since the slower riders set off first, finish times cluster together.

You'll automatically get your personal best time (PB) in your first time trial. Whether it's 31:07 or 25:12, that's your target to aim at next time. It doesn't matter what time anyone else got - first and foremost in a time trial, you're racing against yourself.

A Ten Mile time trial can taken anything between 17 minutes (over 32mph) and 35 minutes. A good target for a fit club cyclist is to break 24 minutes. This requires an average speed of 25mph and is often called ‘evens’. This is the average speed to break the hour for 25 miles. As the clubs main time trials is done on a 10 mile course I have included this...hope it helps

The good thing about racing 10 mile time trials is that you don’t need to do large volumes of miles. This makes it attractive for the racer who can’t spend all day riding. However, to make the most of higher level training, it is still important to build up a base of ’steady’ miles first. If you are new to cycling it is more beneficial to build up a reasonable level of base fitness than jumping straight into racing. A good base for 10 mile time trials is perhaps 100 miles a week. If you do more, it may have a marginal benefit; but is not essential.

Early in the season, I may do interval sessions of 5 minutes which are close to ‘race pace’. This will vary from individual to individual. But, for myself, it involves training at a heart rate of 93-5% max (or 184-190) The gap between the intervals might be quite a long time in the early season. But, shortening the gap between the intervals will make them of increasing benefit.

I feel it is this training where you really feel you make progress in increasing your speed. Basically, the aim is to keep a pace that would be difficult to maintain in a race for 20 minutes. It is the pace, that involves going a little into the red zone. You will feel the build up lactic acid and it will require considerable effort to maintain your effort at this level. Typically, it is a heart rate of 95% or greater; but, it is not a flat out sprint. I find it easiest to do this kind of training on a long hill with a gradual gradient. I like to maintain a similar position to time trial and a high cadence. If you can do 3-4 intervals at this effort level, then it is a very good training session. In practice, you will find that by the third of fourth it is not possible to maintain the high intensity; don’t worry.

The best form of training is undoubtedly racing. Racing is one of the best ways to get fit. It also enables you to learn for yourself, the optimal effort levels required in racing a 10 mile time trial. Another benefit of racing is that you are often inspired to give it everything when people are watching. If you are training on your own, who is going to know if you knock off early or give up after 10 minutes? Also racing gives you the incentive to try and improve times; it is important to maintain a constant enthusiasm for training, this is one of the most important elements.

If you have a time trial bike, the position will be somewhat different to your road bike. Therefore, it is advisable to do some training on your time trial bike. This means that your muscles will be attuned to the slight variation in position. Time trial bikes, especially with disc wheels, are also more difficult to handle. It is good to get practise in training.

If a racer catches up to a competitor, the overtaken rider is required to fall back to a specified distance (about 50 metres) behind the other or maintain wide horizontal separation so that he receives no aerodynamic shelter or help from the other.
To do well in an ITT, a cyclist must

Beginners are often criticized for putting in a J profile effort, meaning that they often go out too hard in the beginning, compensate by reducing their efforts in the middle, and then realize towards the end that they have not put out enough effort during the race.

Starting - Warming-up properly is vital. This probably means being on the bike for at least 60 minutes before you start racing. Increase your intensity steadily aiming to be doing race pace efforts shortly before you're due to start. That way you can be going at race intensity as soon as you push off from the start line

The best strategy is to start fast and finish faster. But DON'T overcook it at the start by sprinting off. The first 45s or so of such an anaerobic effort won't hurt (especially with the pre-race adrenalin) so it's easy to go out to hard. Doing this will send you into oxygen debt and build up excessive lactic acid very quickly. Since you spend the whole race at your anaerobic threshold this won't be cleared from your system as you will be producing more lactic acid all the time. The excess will effectively lower your anaerobic threshold as you may have to dip below AT for a while in order to clear the lactate you generated by starting too hard.

Start in the big ring but on a large rear cog so you get going quickly. Be prepared to go up a few gears shortly after starting. Don't start on your biggest sprocket as the chain may skip. Have one crank at the 10 o-clock position ready to make a power-stroke.

During The Race - You are not going to have time to drink in a 10 mile TT so leave the water bottle behind. However you should drink during the warm-up to ensure adequate hydration. If you're feeling particularly aero-minded you could even take the bottle cage off.

TT's are won and lost in the final 20-30 percent of the race and in the corners. Practice taking corners as quickly as possible: this will ensure you do not have to waste energy bringing yourself up to speed again.

A general strategy of saving some effort for the last portion of the race you will enable you to finish the race in a crescendo. This is much better than doing the first half of the race at warp speed and then blowing up in near the finish. That said, an excellent TTer will have very similar split times assuming wind conditions are not different on the return leg. The skill is to learn how hard you can push yourself over the entire distance. You should have nothing left by the time you reach the end. If you can sprint for the line you didn't go hard enough during the race.

If you have a heart rate monitor make a note of your HR three miles or so from the end. This is what your TT pace should be all the way. If you're spending 10 or 15 mins reaching this you're wasting time! Make sure you warm up better.

Optimisations - Free Speed! When it comes to equipment, the single most advantageous component are aerobars. These decrease the surface area you present to the wind by lowering your body position and bringing your arms together. An easy way of adding speed is to run slick narrow tyres (e.g. 23mm) at high pressure. Avoid potholes though! Disk wheels and tri-spokes are the next most important speed-gain toy. They are very expensive however and it's not worth investing in them when you start out. Aero hats and lycra overshoes (as modelled by Danny above) also make a difference, but a very slight one and you needn't worry if you don't have any.

You hear a lot about "optimal TT cadence" but there is little indication as to exactly what this is. Conventional wisdom suggests that time trialing is mostly a low cadence high force activity as it is difficult to maintain a high cadence in the aero position. However, Lance Armstrong's high cadence style has forced a re-think of the accepted wisdom regarding cadence. The cadence you use will be dictated by what you've trained at and your build. You can educate your body to use a particular cadence. A lighter and slimmer rider may benefit more from high cadences (e.g. 90-100 RPM) which do not require a strong peak force. A stronger and larger rider with more fast twitch muscle fibres may do better at lower cadences (e.g. 75-90 RPM).

Learn to pedal with your knees pointing inwards- this also makes you more aerodynamic. Train this way too so as to get used to it. Work on your body position. Get more experienced riders to check it out. You can shave seconds off by getting well positioned and it's much cheaper than a disk wheel!

Don't ride with your head down! You won't see where you're going and you may crash. Two riders went to hospital during a recent Varsity match because one of them rode into the other instead of overtaking...

The Road - Many flat TTs are done on "dragstrip courses" which are typically flat A roads with a lot of traffic. These produce the fastest times as you get sucked up by the traffic. Although drag-strip courses are probably more dangerous than minor roads they do have the advantage that passing vehicles will have seen you from several hundred meters away. In practice there are very few accidents on these courses.

Don't ride in the "hard shoulder" area inside the solid white line. This area contains all the grit and broken glass and you'll probably puncture. It is unlikely to be much safer and you have no where to veer into if anything goes wrong. Instead try to ride in the main lane, preferably in the fast region where the tarmac has been smoothed away by car tyres. The race will have marshals and signs so drivers will be aware of your presence as well as that of the other racers.
If it's safe move out towards the center of the road to take maximum advantage of the draft created by passing lorries. But move towards the gutter to avoid being slowed down by oncoming traffic. Ignore any irrate drivers on A roads. You have as much right to be there as they do and the police will have approved the race.