Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

aimed at removing the perceived barrier to entry where people new to the sport think you need a £10k spaceship to take part!

So you only need a £9k drop-bar spaceship, plus another grand for deeper wheels in events using your 90mm rule to complement the 62-65mm stock wheels which are good for events running to CTT road bike rules 🙂

I don’t think the onus is really on the organiser. The whole idea of TTs is trying to beat the clock / yourself. That’s certainly the attitude I’ve always taken.

Competition by definition has a winner, it’s difficult if not impossible to really level the playing field.

I don’t think the onus is really on the organiser

In terms of what a qualifying "road bike" is, it's entirely down to the organiser. There is no national regulation. I'm all for people running 90mm rims and long-sleeved trip suits on their drop-bar spaceships, but not everybody agrees.

Wool vest. Steel tubes. And mavic open pros. No powermeters. No Electronic devices.

mavic open pros

Tubs or GTFO

Also, that bike was the one which forced RTTC (as was) to add Regulation 14a, so it's an ironic choice to illustrate a point about keeping things the same as they ever were 🙂

Wool vest.

Wool shorts. That'll sort the men from the boys and the women from the girls.

Silk vest, wool shorts

I just googled Alf and picked one that look good. So fun fact.

home knitted for extra points.

True, but it’s unfair to judge an organiser on their (lack of) pedantry when their intention is to get back to sportspersonship and an even playing field.

The fault is with the participants failing to adhere to the implicit ideals of the sport rather than the organisers’ failure to enforce rules.

If it encourages more racers I'm all for it. I still did the odd road-bike race in the early season when I was racing more TTs. This year I will be sticking with my £10k spaceship though.

In general, we have found the following to be a good guide, and these are the rules that many of the events below will follow:

1. No aerobars, clip on aerobars or aero extensions can be used
   
2. Hands must be holding the handlebars at all times whilst racing (ie. not with forearms resting on the handlebar)
   
3. Wheels must have a minimum of 12 spokes each, and have a maximum rim depth of 90mm
   
4. Helmets must have no visor
   
5. Ears must not be covered by the helmet (Giro Aerohead helmets are not permitted)
   

These are Xav’s rules for the road bike. Is there anything specific that people would add or remove from this to improve them? We are meeting tomorrow to decide on the rules for a road bike category in all of our upcoming TTs and these are already a substantial improvement on what has so far been suggested.

This is Northroads' definition:

Must ride without TT bars/extensions, no TT helmet,
no 'trip socks' etc, wheel depth less than approx 60mm ie: BC Road Race legal with wheels as above

90mm seems pretty deep to me.

"Hands must be holding the handlebars at all times"

technically that means brake hoods are out which is a bad idea ;)

The 90mm was mainly to make sure that no one on the start line has to measure a wheel (as there's basically nothing on the market deeper than that apart from niche wheels like our TITAN (100mm), a Flo 9 (95mm) or a Knight Composites 95mm), and I wouldn't expect anyone to try and ride them.

Otherwise you might get people using 82mm Zipp 808s (which are road race/crit legal) and others not noticing until later, cue lots of anguish etc. plus the raft of 80-88mm wheels which get used in RRs and crits. The more restrictions the less people enter, that's our thinking.

The CTT outright stole our rules for their classic series events and have basically kept everything apart from changing it to 65mm which is a weird non depth.

Yeah, that does make sense. Brings to mind chalk lines on the payment to measure gear inches.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing, just a wonderfully archaic practice.

Look pretty good to me.

When I set up our Road Bike category for the TTs at Hillingdon 5 or 6 years ago these were the rules I had:

"we don’t allow any aero clip on bars / time trial / triathlon bars. No pointy aero helmets, no disc wheels. Wheels should be no deeper than 60mm"

60mm was meant to allow Zipp 404s, and I think I named them as an example, as well as Dura Ace C50, which I had. But it's a bit arbitrary and I agree that deep rims have increasingly become mainstream since then.

I never measured any wheels at the start but I did end up having to DQ the guy who won the series the first year after he posted on Strava that he had got away with using deeper wheels than he should have done! If I was doing it now, I can't see why I wouldn't go for 90mm as the limit.

after he posted on Strava that he had got away with using deeper wheels than he should have done!

hahaha

60mm was meant to allow... Dura Ace C50, which I had...

How convenient.... ;)

Convenient for measuring them!

Nice that Cycling Weekly are using a pic of a bike/rider that breaks most of your rules to promote the series @xavierdisley

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changing it to 65mm which is a weird non depth.

It's not a non-depth. I found loads of road bikes offered with rims of 62,64 or 65mm as stock, but only one with deeper (DuraAce C75s on a Pinarello)

I don't get the discussion of "BC legal"; these are CTT races, so what BC get up to is irrelevant.

CTT already had an arbitrary rule for front wheels, I don't get (beyond understanding too well that the CTT board don't have two brain cells to rub together between them) why they didn't just extend that to rear wheels.

Banning HED3s (or other CTT legal baton-style front wheels) from the road bike class is purely an aesthetic rule, not a sporting one. Nobody who is in it to win it will use them anyway.

Wheel rule order of preference:

1. Any 45% open wheel
   
2. Any wire-spoked 45% open wheel
   
3. Xav's rules, which are pretty close to 2 anyway and simpler to arbitrate on the start line
   
4. ... er
   
5. That's it.