First ever TT

[MikeG]

......But it makes you want to come back and try again and again

Yeah. Why do I get the feeling that I am standing at the top of a very long and very slippery slope?

 

[jowwy]

Yeah. Why do I get the feeling that I am standing at the top of a very long and very slippery slope?

Cause thats what this game does to you.

I have to tbh i love it and after my first TT in march i went straight out and bought a shiv and havent looked back

 

[Rob3rt]

The art is in balancing hard enough but not too hard. For me, the 1st minute is done below anticipated race effort, then I will ride as hard as I think I can sustain to the end for the rest and in the last few mins I will be flat out in a last ditch effort to get any reserve out.

If I feel bad, I often shift to a HARDER gear. Slows cadence, allows you to bring breathing under control and gives you something to push against in a controlled way.

 

[Stu Plows]

I was fully expectant of an improvement on Wednesday night but instead I was 2 and a half minutes slower. Just slower the whole way round too.

Still not overly sure why, but I have notched it down to being a little tired from a hard-ish session Tuesday night.

 

[Joshua Plumtree]

Robert might put me right on this, but I've been told that riding long distances at 18-20mph will kill all the speed in your legs over a short distance where us mere mortals are hoping to maintain somewhere near 25mph over 10 miles. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Shorter rides at a slightly higher pace (or even the same pace) might prove more beneficial

Just about to do a hilly training run that I've been putting off for the last hour so, unless one of you TT suckers (competitors) would care to join me?!

 

[Hacienda71]

I think it depends what you mean by long distances. I was always led to believe that as well as working on your threshold power doing intervals etc you should do longer hard but not flat out tempo rides of two hours or so on a pretty regular basis was good for TTing. I appreciate that is pretty simplistic and there are all sorts of different intervals and tapering of training before racing, but I don't think you can discount the benefit of a good tempo ride. A 100 plus miler may be a bit different but it doesn't seem to slow Tony Martin, Bradley Wiggins and co when they TT.

 

[Joshua Plumtree]

Yep, I was thinking of longish rides of over 60 miles. I tend to do anything up to 40 miles at tempo. But you're right, it doesn't seem to slow down people like Tony Martin, so I suspect it's a little more complicated than a simple black or white answer - isn't it always!

 

[TheJDog]

I did my first ever last night, at the ripe old age of 44. 10.3 miles at Hillingdon Cycle Circuit, organized by Westerley CC. The circuit is 0.9 miles or so, you do 11 laps. As I came across the line on what I thought was my 11th lap, I thought my time was a bit too good and I must have to do another lap. My 11th and 12th laps were both 20 seconds faster than all the rest.

Time of 26:41, average speed just over 23mph. Corresponds to a roughly 25:54 10 miler. The track is pretty flat and smooth, though, and on private land so no worrying about traffic or anything. I was on my standard road bike. Winning time was 21:47, I don't know what he was riding but there were a few guys on very very fancy TT bikes. And one guy on a steel fixie with tri bars dropped well below the headset with one of those adjustable stems

I'm pretty pleased. Well within my public target of 30 minutes and my private target of 28 minutes. They have another in two weeks. If the weather is nice again, I might try to see if I can get it in below 26 minutes.

 

[TheJDog]

A few of us headed West to Hillingdon after work to try again. Thought I'd ramp up the effort a bit, and aimed to keep my HR around 165-170 but the Garmin ran out of batteries on lap 6 so I had to do 5 laps on feel. I lost count again (!!!!) and put in an effort on laps 11 and 12.

Did a 26:11 for the 10.3 miles, which might be a mid 25 for 10 miles. Pleased enough. I wonder what sort of time I could do if I could count.

 

[Justinslow]

I'm liking all this, I just did a local 10 mile tt course today on my new cheap road bike, I haven't done a lot of riding for years and have only owned an old Saracen mtb. It wasn't actually in an event but I used strava to record it.
Probably a bit silly really as I've done zero training but i managed it in 33 mins, it was very windy and really hard, much harder than I thought. It gives me a benchmark now though and I reckon I can easily shave minutes off this time with a bit of practice. Legs feel like total jelly now though!

 

[OttoPilot]

Thanks Robert, Joshua. Yes, I've tried both extremes now in the 2 TTs I've done. Went out like a fool on the first one and blew up, then pootled around on the second and put in a burst at the end. I'm a hill-climber, really, and long distance rider. These TTs were only for a bit of fun, but the damn things niggle at me, given how fast I can go over long distances, and how I haven't gone much faster in a measly little 10 miler. On a relaxed geometry bike, riding on the hoods, I still think I should be doing around 27-1/2 minutes given what I do on, say, 100km rides. I think I'll set out a local 10 mile ride and just practice a bit.

Just come to this thread while idly researching how to train for TTs. I did my first one a few weeks ago, on a mildly hilly 13-mile course, riding a standard road bike (though one unfamiliar to me). I went off hard, and - I later discovered - very quickly hit my max HR, and stayed at about 95% Max (not threshold) for the whole ride. Which I completed at less than my normal 100k speed! A day or two later I discovered I had an ear infection, which may well have affected me, but I'm very surprised how badly I performed. But, that said, I enjoyed it and am busy planning how I'm going to do a whole lot better next year!