You are hurting from the second after you set off, all the way until you finish, as it’s impossible to do your best time, without paying that price. Therefore, they are not for the faint of heart, but this, if your ambition is to be the best you can. For most riders though, it can just be fun to say you rode 15kms in 30 minutes … not bad for most people and yes you can’t stop, but, you finish without needing an oxygen mask !
However if you are the former, here are some hints at riding a better time.
I know in my last article, you probably heard my distain for aero everything, but in reality, that is the current trend of trying to “buy speed”, I object to. However, one needs to adhere to some common sense in the pursuit of speed. Your body represents 80% of the wind resistance while riding at any speed, especially trying to exceed 40 kph. Therefore as Chris Boardman said, “Making your silhouette smaller, is a crude, but fairly accurate way to reduce drag, TT bars bring your arms in and round off your shoulders. Dropping your body also has a significant impact for every centimetre lower you go.” However, if you don’t have a modern TT bike equipped with Tri-bars, then you have two choices. 1. Hold the drops like the photo of Ralph Engers, I posted a few days ago and contort your body into the smallest shape possible. However, 2. is simpler and far easier to adapt to. Hold onto the brake levers, make sure your arms form a ‘L’ shape, lowering your torso. This places your back and your forearms essentially flat and parallel to the ground, for a very good TT position. This is how I rode when I raced and frankly I found it faster than number 1, because I could hold that position for complete 40 and 80 km races, whereas the contour artist was impossible for me to hold for entire races, even shorter 15km ones. I also rode with 38mm wide bars, which like everything else, has made a full circle and narrower bars are 'in’ again, due to the profile narrowing they promote. Mind you I have been riding 42 cm widths for the past 40 years, which I do find more comfortable, so throwing away perhaps 5 or 6 seconds on 15kms, isn’t much that much of a sacrifice, unless you are looking to ride it under 18 or 19 minutes.
The next is pedalling efficiency. Here again, there are two schools of thought. Traditionally, big gears are preferred for specialists. They require strength, more than souplesse, but you are rewarded with speed. Again, my experience is the antithesis of this. I like to spin my gears. Hear me out on this one. Spinning a smaller gear at higher RPMs increases blood flow, and leads to less lactic acid build-up, plus probably less chance of injury as well. You can ride the same speed with a 53x14, or a 51x15, you just need to adjust your pedalling cadence and power output. I always rode with a single 51 tooth front chairing. Firstly the smaller front, meant that when there was an incline, you could actually find a smaller gear on the same rear cog as the big gear pusher, but more importantly, the difference between gears is smaller, hence more subtle, so it was easier to find the best gear for the terrain at the time. We only had 5, then 6, or 7 when I raced. Now you can have as many as 13 rear cogs .. Oh how I would have loved that ! It would be a souplesse rider’s dream back then. The object, is to ride as efficiently as you can, so depending on your physique and preferences, chose your gear ratios appropriately.
So now we have the position and gearing chosen, how do you actually ride the course ? This is much harder than you think, as the terrain, the wind and what you had for breakfast all play a role in how you actually ride the race. Unfortunately most of the time, there is no constant (except for the breakfast), as most courses are deliberately set as an out and back. Otherwards, to either ride to the halfway point and retrace your route, or you ride some sort of a circuit. This is done so you have portions that are a headwind, tail wind, cross wind and you running out of wind. I am not sure of the rules today, but any records must be set with a course that is essentially half one way and the other in reverse, so you can’t take advantage of a full tail wind for the entire race. Hills throw another degree of complexity into the mix.
Here is a basic rule of thumb. Ride harder when the course is harder, (that probably doesn’t necessarily mean faster, as the harder portion is generally up an incline, or into a head wind) However, with a tail wind, or down a hill, spin fast, but try to use this as a rest (rest is a relative term in this case, )perhaps I should have said “don’t over do it”. The theory here is that expending more energy when you would normally be slowing down, yields more overall average speed rewards. If it takes 5 minutes to climb a hill and you can descend it in 3, try ascending in 41/4 or 4 1/2, while the decent may now may take only 3 1/2, yet you can recover a bit in the process, so you have saved at least 15 seconds, but importantly, the slight recovery on the way down, will lead to faster times for the rest of the race. It’s subtle and perhaps you only slightly modify it, so the total time is identical, but you will still gain that extra ’rest’.
The idea is to learn to carefully gauge your energy output, so you finish putting out your full potential for the entire race. This leads me into the negative split. Ideally you want to finish the last half of the race faster than the first. Again, do not take that at face value. Change the concept to power, intensity, or intelligence ! If you have a headwind second half, trying to reduce the time may be optimistic. Reread the previous paragraph, think about how you can ride smarter. But that is only half of it. The original idea behind negative split, is you expend energy incrementally. You should not start too hard, or you will ’bonk’ (do they still use that word ?) and suffer for the rest of the race, A gradual build up will enable your body to adapt to the stresses, especially if you didn’t do a proper warm-up before the race. As Eddy Merckx famously said. “You can’t win the race of you don’t finish. “(This is relevant to both your body and the equipment you use. More about this some other time) Then finish the race with all you have. Being closer to the end of the effort, means that if you collapse on the line from exhaustion, you at least can rest immediately thereafter (more on that one too, another time)
So I would like to see some 18 or 19 minute 15km TTs this summer. Who’s going to put a smile on my face with one of those ?!?!
How to ride (or rather “race”) a time trial
Firstly … the truth, about the race of truth …
You are hurting from the second after you set off, all the way until you finish, as it’s impossible to do your best time, without paying that price. Therefore, they are not for the faint of heart, but this, if your ambition is to be the best you can. For most riders though, it can just be fun to say you rode 15kms in 30 minutes … not bad for most people and yes you can’t stop, but, you finish without needing an oxygen mask !
However if you are the former, here are some hints at riding a better time.
I know in my last article, you probably heard my distain for aero everything, but in reality, that is the current trend of trying to “buy speed”, I object to. However, one needs to adhere to some common sense in the pursuit of speed. Your body represents 80% of the wind resistance while riding at any speed, especially trying to exceed 40 kph. Therefore as Chris Boardman said, “Making your silhouette smaller, is a crude, but fairly accurate way to reduce drag, TT bars bring your arms in and round off your shoulders. Dropping your body also has a significant impact for every centimetre lower you go.” However, if you don’t have a modern TT bike equipped with Tri-bars, then you have two choices. 1. Hold the drops like the photo of Ralph Engers, I posted a few days ago and contort your body into the smallest shape possible. However, 2. is simpler and far easier to adapt to. Hold onto the brake levers, make sure your arms form a ‘L’ shape, lowering your torso. This places your back and your forearms essentially flat and parallel to the ground, for a very good TT position. This is how I rode when I raced and frankly I found it faster than number 1, because I could hold that position for complete 40 and 80 km races, whereas the contour artist was impossible for me to hold for entire races, even shorter 15km ones. I also rode with 38mm wide bars, which like everything else, has made a full circle and narrower bars are 'in’ again, due to the profile narrowing they promote. Mind you I have been riding 42 cm widths for the past 40 years, which I do find more comfortable, so throwing away perhaps 5 or 6 seconds on 15kms, isn’t much that much of a sacrifice, unless you are looking to ride it under 18 or 19 minutes.
The next is pedalling efficiency. Here again, there are two schools of thought. Traditionally, big gears are preferred for specialists. They require strength, more than souplesse, but you are rewarded with speed. Again, my experience is the antithesis of this. I like to spin my gears. Hear me out on this one. Spinning a smaller gear at higher RPMs increases blood flow, and leads to less lactic acid build-up, plus probably less chance of injury as well. You can ride the same speed with a 53x14, or a 51x15, you just need to adjust your pedalling cadence and power output. I always rode with a single 51 tooth front chairing. Firstly the smaller front, meant that when there was an incline, you could actually find a smaller gear on the same rear cog as the big gear pusher, but more importantly, the difference between gears is smaller, hence more subtle, so it was easier to find the best gear for the terrain at the time. We only had 5, then 6, or 7 when I raced. Now you can have as many as 13 rear cogs .. Oh how I would have loved that ! It would be a souplesse rider’s dream back then. The object, is to ride as efficiently as you can, so depending on your physique and preferences, chose your gear ratios appropriately.
So now we have the position and gearing chosen, how do you actually ride the course ? This is much harder than you think, as the terrain, the wind and what you had for breakfast all play a role in how you actually ride the race. Unfortunately most of the time, there is no constant (except for the breakfast), as most courses are deliberately set as an out and back. Otherwards, to either ride to the halfway point and retrace your route, or you ride some sort of a circuit. This is done so you have portions that are a headwind, tail wind, cross wind and you running out of wind. I am not sure of the rules today, but any records must be set with a course that is essentially half one way and the other in reverse, so you can’t take advantage of a full tail wind for the entire race. Hills throw another degree of complexity into the mix.
Here is a basic rule of thumb. Ride harder when the course is harder, (that probably doesn’t necessarily mean faster, as the harder portion is generally up an incline, or into a head wind) However, with a tail wind, or down a hill, spin fast, but try to use this as a rest (rest is a relative term in this case, )perhaps I should have said “don’t over do it”. The theory here is that expending more energy when you would normally be slowing down, yields more overall average speed rewards. If it takes 5 minutes to climb a hill and you can descend it in 3, try ascending in 41/4 or 4 1/2, while the decent may now may take only 3 1/2, yet you can recover a bit in the process, so you have saved at least 15 seconds, but importantly, the slight recovery on the way down, will lead to faster times for the rest of the race. It’s subtle and perhaps you only slightly modify it, so the total time is identical, but you will still gain that extra ’rest’.
The idea is to learn to carefully gauge your energy output, so you finish putting out your full potential for the entire race. This leads me into the negative split. Ideally you want to finish the last half of the race faster than the first. Again, do not take that at face value. Change the concept to power, intensity, or intelligence ! If you have a headwind second half, trying to reduce the time may be optimistic. Reread the previous paragraph, think about how you can ride smarter. But that is only half of it. The original idea behind negative split, is you expend energy incrementally. You should not start too hard, or you will ’bonk’ (do they still use that word ?) and suffer for the rest of the race, A gradual build up will enable your body to adapt to the stresses, especially if you didn’t do a proper warm-up before the race. As Eddy Merckx famously said. “You can’t win the race of you don’t finish. “(This is relevant to both your body and the equipment you use. More about this some other time) Then finish the race with all you have. Being closer to the end of the effort, means that if you collapse on the line from exhaustion, you at least can rest immediately thereafter (more on that one too, another time)
So I would like to see some 18 or 19 minute 15km TTs this summer. Who’s going to put a smile on my face with one of those ?!?!