I Love Bicycling

I Love Bicycling is a website that is geared towards cycling for beginners with road cycling tips, training articles, nutrition tips, weight loss, how to’s and bike repair articles.

Race Day Strategy To Have The Perfect Time Trial

by

time trial

A key time trial is approaching. You want to have a great race but have the jitters. Get over them with a good plan starting with the day before the race up until you cross the finish line. Make the most of the many hours of training with a detailed approach to the race.

Two Nights Out

Make sure you get great sleep two nights out. Sometimes it is difficult to do it the night before a race, but two nights out is much easier. If you get a chance the day before the time trial, take a nap.

The Night Before

Pack everything you think you might need, even if it is a small possibility. Check the weather and bring appropriate kit (do not forget your shoes and helmet!). Bring all of your nutrition and hydration essentials. A small tool kit may come in handy if something needs a quick adjustment. All of your inflation tools – pump, right angle adapter for a disc wheel, spare tubes – are mandatory. Bring your trainer or rollers to have an effective warm up. Pack everything the night before and have it ready to go so you have piece of mind when you go to bed.

Morning Preparation

How much to eat for breakfast before a time trial depends on how much time there is before the race. If you have three hours, a full breakfast may suit you. If there is less time, trim down how much food you eat. This will take some experimentation. Make sure it agrees with you.

Arrive Early

Get to the venue early enough so that there is time to pre-ride the course. It will allow you to see the best lines on the road and give you an idea of where you need to put the power down and where you can recover some. If you do not have time to pre-ride but the road is still open, drive the course; it is better than going into it blind.

Pair Your Clock

Check your start time for the time trial. Compare your own reliable clock with the official race clock. Make sure they are close enough that you will know exactly when you need to start based on your own clock.

Warm Up

The longer the time trial, the shorter the warm up. First, you want to save your effort for out on the course and second, you have a little time at the beginning to ease into your pace. You want to ease into your pace so you do not blow up and have more left for later in the time trial. For a shorter time trial, you should do a longer warm up because there is not as much time to differentiate yourself from the rest of the riders. You set a pace that is nearly full gas from the start.

Start your warm up easy and work your way up to harder efforts. Do some time in each zone up to zone 4; the duration of the time trial will determine how long you will spend in each zone. Include some high cadence around 120rpm for short bursts to loosen up your legs. Do not overdo it zone 4 – you only need to activate your metabolic systems, not win the warm up.

Time Trial Start

Get to the start line for the time trial with about five minutes to go. That means you have to be done with your warm up, have gone to the bathroom, made final adjustments to your kit, and taken care of anything else that needs to be done.

You are all ready to go. All of the preparation lead you hear. Do not blow it by going way too hard off the line. On go, do a few decently hard pedal strokes to get the bike going, but then get into the aerobars on your time trial bike or low aerodynamic position on your road bike as quickly as possible. You will gain more by being aerodynamic than by sprinting and it will keep you from blowing up. If the time trial is longer than fifteen minutes or so, ease into your pace over the first two or so minutes. You should not be going easy but at a sustainable pace below your target. Shorter than fifteen minutes and you need to be ready at the line to go straight to your target pace.

The Middle

The coefficient of drag versus velocity is a cubed relationship, while the gravity versus velocity is linear. This dictates that you get more bang for your buck with extra effort on climbs rather than descents. This should also inform your time trial pacing. Think of your ideal pace on the flats to be a 100% effort. On a climb, do 110% of the flat effort, and a descent, do 90% of the flat effort. These numbers are relative to illustrate pacing ideas and only applies to flatter or rolling time trials. If the time trial has longer climbs, or is a hill climb time trial you will want to stick to your target pace so you do not blow up.

Standing On Climbs

Sometimes you will see riders come out of their aerobars for a hill. This is only worthwhile if your speed drops below twenty kilometers per hour or so. Otherwise aerodynamics are more beneficial than the additional force of standing on the pedals.

Staying Aero

Through the middle and end of the time trial it is important to maintain a good aerodynamic profile. It pays to think about it because as you tire it will become more difficult to keep low, narrow, and stable. It is worthwhile to expend a little energy to ensure that you keep the good form that you worked on leading to the time trial. The less the air sees of you, the more the effort from your legs will count.

The End

Your lungs are burning and your legs ache en route to a great time. Do not give up now. Really empty the tank for this last section. If you can stand up and sprint at the end of a time trial you did not leave enough of yourself on the course. Relief will come soon enough when you cross the finish line. In the meantime, stay in a very aerodynamic position and meter out your final effort to carry you across the line on empty.

After you cross the line, catch your breath, clean the salt and snot off of your face, get some water and recovery food and get yourself to the podium.

Cycling Time Trials – What Are They?

by

cycling time trials

Cycling time trials are the race of truth; they are humans pushing themselves to the limit to go as fast as possible over a given course. There is no peloton to dictate tactics. The rider must meter out their effort perfectly for the duration of the race to ensure victory. It is the most simple form of racing – rider against clock. Lowest time wins.

Cycling Time Trials – Straight Forward But Different 

But in reality, it is not so easy to nail down what the discipline is. There are many types of cycling time trials. There are flat time trials suited to bigger riders with very big engines. There are hilly time trials for the punchier riders. There are hill climb time trials, where the rider with the highest power to weight ratio (and generally very low overall weight) wins. And team time trials emphasize excellent teamwork and smoothness to clock in the quickest time.

Shorter time trials (less than ten kilometers or so), often at the beginning of a stage race, are called prologues. It allows officials to sort out the classification before the first road stage along with featuring each individual rider to the fans. If there’s a time trial in the middle of a stage race of a similar distance, it is just a time trial. Forty kilometer time trials are often a benchmark of time trial ability. Crack an hour and you are pretty good. Go a bit faster and you are really flying. Most time trials will fall in between ten and forty kilometers.

The Equipment

Equipment for cycling time trials often seems exotic. The bike is not your ordinary road bike. You race it much less frequently than your road bike. It has different angles to allow for a more aerodynamic position. Everything on the bike is aerodynamically optimized. The position is different. Your road bike might be comfortable for a six hour ride but your time trial bike setup for forty kilometers at a time would be uncomfortable for the same six hour ride. There are aerobars out front, allowing you to get narrow and low, which are illegal for mass start races and even in some time trials.

Eddy Merckx Time Trials

A recent trend to level the playing field at smaller races demands that riders use the same equipment they would use in a mass start road race. Also known as Eddy Merckx style. It lowers the investment level required to be competitive in the sport and some argue that it levels the playing field to allow the best rider to come through, not just the rider with the best investment in equipment.

Equipment Obsession

Cyclists will obsess over equipment. This tire paired with that tube will provide the lower rolling resistance. That skinsuit is faster than this skinsuit. These wheels are the fastest ever made… Cycling time trials are where that equipment obsession comes to its climax. It gives every opportunity to either believe in your gear or second guess it. That can certainly lead to riders pushing themselves differently based on how they feel about their setup.

How to Get Into Cycling Time Trials

Many, many local clubs run time trials. They are relatively easy to set up, provide good training, and are a competitive and fun atmosphere. The bar to entry is very low – you do not need to have any experience riding in a pack, registrations fees are minuscule compared to big road events, and they are close to home. They give a nice target to train for and provide good tests of fitness along the way. Search out your local club to see if they have cycling time trials to push your limits.

Try Them All

Despite the fact that some cycling time trials suit a more particular rider, you should try them all. If you do not succeed like you would like, at least you had a good, hard training day on the bike. And if you do have a very fast day, tick that type of time trial off as one that suits you.

You Don’t Need All The Aero Equipment to Get Started

You can even show up to your local time trials on your current road setup. Be consistent about your setup, train well, and you will see improvements in time. Then maybe return next season with an improved bike setup and see how much you gained compared to your old setup. It is not necessary to sink money into your equipment to get the most out of time trialing but if you want to be competitive at the top level, eventually you will need to drop some money on your gear.

Your Own Personal Time Trial

To set an even lower bar, find an uninterrupted course where you can smash the pedals without interuption. Then time trial on it periodically. You do not even need to tell anyone about it; it can be your own time trial where the only person you are competing against is yourself. It does remove the social aspect of competition and the opportunity to learn from others but it will certainly increase your fitness.

A Gateway to Mass Start Races

Now that you are hooked on competition and pushing your limits, you may want to branch out into mass start races – criteriums, road races, circuit races, and multi-day stage races even. Hopefully through your local club cycling time trials you have made a network of friends and mentors that can guide you on a successful path to wider racing opportunities. You already have the foundational fitness from all the cycling time trials, so why not give it a try?

Useful Info

Recent Posts

Connect with Us