Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

"We time to whole seconds"

The future is coming.

I was just intrigued as to whether there had been any noise on such a system. Clearly not!

However in 10 years from now, will it still be manual?

Probably. The technology to do electronic timing is hardly new. It was available 10 years ago, and we don't have electronic timing now. And I can hardly see the supply of superannuated former testers capable of holding a stopwatch drying up to the point where there's no old codgers to act as timekeepers available. In my club we've got any number of more senior members who can do the time-keeping. Trying to find one who won't die from the strain of doing pushing-off duties is the hard bit.

It was discussed on TTF, but 'noise' is just the right description, given that the discussion took place on TTF. The signal to noise ratio on that forum is appalling.

Only from you.

I couldn't give a shit. I barely remember my time to the seconds let alone 10s 100s and 1000s!

Actually the supply is starting to dry up

Yes, that would be impossible at hillingdon manually.

They did used to do it manually before we got the system, using an abacus with coloured beads to record the laps for each rider, but we had much smaller fields then!

Probably. The technology to do electronic timing is hardly new. It was available 10 years ago, and we don't have electronic timing now. And I can hardly see the supply of superannuated former testers capable of holding a stopwatch drying up to the point where there's no old codgers to act as timekeepers available. In my club we've got any number of more senior members who can do the time-keeping.

We're running out in mine - mainly because they all keep riding!

I reckon it will come, when the technology gets cheaper and you can do it reliably with a post at the side of the road rather than a wire across it.

I've had enough dodgy calls from timekeepers, and seen what goes on when riders have been missed to be sure which I would rather trust.

And I've seen how reliable our system has been: in 50 events over 5 years, with an average of say 30 riders doing 11 laps - that's about 16,500 passes - there have only been 3 or 4 missed lap readings.

We, LVCC, were considering using transponders at the Velopark for our Ten series . That would be for 90 riders doing 10 laps.

We were not convinced that it would be more reliable than our analogue system; but we would be interested in a cheap and reliable digital system

Our timekeepers are very , very analogue but also highly reliable.

Lasers! Seabass (or tripods) with lasers!

Fricking lasers?

Bingo.

That's impressive! Fair play.

I was wondering how you guys did it. You must have a good organisation to count 90 x 10 laps, but I guess they are not all out on the track at the same time so not quite as hard as it sounds.

Unfortunately the proven systems aren't cheap! I looked into it again last year as some of our transponders were approaching end of life. There seem to be just two systems that are widely used for this type of thing, a the costs were similar, so we just spent a few hundred on 5 new transponders and stuck with what we had.

We are very organised. Some of our methods are Heath Robinson but they work .
Come and have a look ..

Yes, I've been meaning to! Must get organised to come to one this year.

Anyone have any J/Ski-bend extensions they want to shift?

I've had enough dodgy calls from timekeepers, and seen what goes on when riders have been missed to be sure which I would rather trust.

This. I did a hilly 22 last month, I was second last rider off, and happened to be the second last rider to finish. When I passed the timekeeper they were busy putting stuff in the boot of the car. I was too bloody knackered to shout a number, it would have come out as "nneerrrghhh". My time on the provisional results was 9 minutes out, couldn't find anyone to discuss it with at the time.

Unsurprisingly the official results sheet hasn't been seen yet....

Peter Carter is absolutely right. (post 12456)

The Hounslow has just lost its main timekeeper-he's retired, and we are struggling to get replacements to time our club events programme.

We will get though this season, just about, but I'm not sure about the future. Many traditional clubs are now in the position that the members who were doing nearly all the work (not just timekeeping) are getting to the point where they are just too old to carry on, but nothing like enough younger (by this I mean middle aged) people are coming forward to replace them.

It's not just us - it seems to be a general problem.

just discovered the reason that my bike sounded like a bag of spanners towards the end of last sunday's race was that the chain ring bolts were shockingly loose, which also explains why I was struggling to shift as well!

<=== should not be allowed spanners!

oh well, all sorted now, shifting like a dream, the 26 & 24 turbo cottons seem to be smaller than the 25 & 23 GP4000s they have replaced which is probably a good thing!

nothing like enough younger (by this I mean middle aged) people are coming forward to replace them

Possibly people are riding for longer, but we also had something of a lost generation before the current cycling boom, so fields are thick with 40-somethings but there's a very sharp drop off in age groups much above that. As a club (and we're not unique in this) we expect any member who regularly rides our club events to make themselves available several times per season to assist in the running of the events.

Anyone ridden the Kent 12 hr?

No, but I rode some of the course on Saturday, along with a guy who had done it. It wasn't a mega-windy day, but the winds were pretty challenging.
I'm pretty sure @hippy did it a few years ago.

As already said, wind is your enemy down there. I've done two 50s and been very lucky both times in that it was pretty calm, but I rode a sportive about 6 years ago and the wind was blowing so hard you were chewing the bars doing about 12mph.

The event does always seem to get a lot of good praise, so why not give it a go?