Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

Close. For the last ten years I've been carrying 5L of beer around in a bladder duct taped to my abdomen.

This is for 12hr though.
For a 100mi I could probably get away without drinking at all, depending on temp.

I've tried the bladder thing and it doesn't really work for me. Certainly not in the front. One thing that might work is a camelbak undershirt that I could use on my back but such that it kept it from moving. They're only good for 1.5L though I think and that's not enough, especially given last year's dehydration and final 2hr collapse.

Another option would be to ditch the bottle cage and just grab a bottle, neck it and chuck it each time. But then I'd need someone in place to go get the bottles.

I very nearly volunteered for bottle collection duty, fuck, I'm drunk.

You wouldn't be the first to have a bottle thrown at you by a fat man in a tight onesie.

Ah, so you have been out in Hastings Old Town on a Friday night.

Or, combine the new specialized/Uk tab coyle custom seat pack and put a massive camelback in there…?

You could probably make it into one of those arse fairings and call it 'structural'.

Found these aerocoach pads for the older plastic wing or align arm rests. Never used and free if anyone wants them?

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What's the cheapest, cleanest rear light that will actually be visible from an Adamo with the rear hook?

The Hounslow Midsummer Cup 25, due to take place yesterday (20th) was cancelled because there were three sets of temporary traffic lights on the course.

Is this another example of a depressing trend which is beginning to make it virtually impossible to promote events?

The condition of the roads west of London (and probably everwhere else) is worse than ever, and this inevitably leads to roadworks popping up all over the place; it only takes one set to ruin hours of an organiser's hard work. There are not many people still prepared to take on event organisation and this sort of problem is likely to thin the ranks even further.

For example, in 2014 and 15 I was my club's road race organiser - a tougher proposition than a TT . In 2014 the race was lost (after a lot of work had been done) because of roadworks. The next year we came within an ace of the same thing, but just managed to save the situation at the last minute by getting someone to postpone their job (I think it was Thames Water, but my memory may be imperfect).

It seems to me things have got a lot worse in the past six years - I wouldn't dream of attempting a road race under present circumstances, and even a club TT would be a big ask owing to the expectation of failure.

Perhaps it could be possible to have more flexibility with courses, at least for club events. This would probably come into conflict with the risk assessment bogey and police permission to hold events....

Literally made a joke about that yesterday. Not the shit state of the roads but whether people still actually raced here. I guess I'm jaded. I don't go out any more, I do most of my training on a turbo trainer now. London and surrounds and the drivers and roads within it have basically killed my enjoyment of cycling and racing.

it could be possible to have more flexibility with courses, at least for club events.

MDCC will send police notification for both main and back up courses for next year's club events.

An excellent idea which I will pass on to our race sec. Thanks.

PS - sorry, I thought I'd pressed 'reply' to Tester, but I hope it will be obvious that was my intention.

Literally made a joke about that yesterday. Not the shit state of the roads but whether people still actually raced here. I guess I'm jaded.

It looks like this is the spirit of the times we live in - you're certainly not alone. There's not much racing left, but there is the question of how many people want to race.

I find it dispiriting that the busiest thread in the Rides and Races forum is the Pro Cycling column. Perhaps we have a lot of pro riders on this forum, but I suspect we have a large number of armchair cyclists.

Is this the result of monetising sport? You and I (plus many others here) have been lucky enough to get our racing careers in while it was still possible, but the future does not look hopeful.

More people are cycling which is good, but they are doing different things from what they used to.

TT numbers are down, but, last time I looked, they were high for the fast courses but low for slow ones. And it must be very hard to put on a road race, especially in the south east.

But the whole sportive scene is pretty new and so is Ultraracing, which gets talked about plenty on here.

As a club we (Westerley) are going through a bit of strategy and objective setting now. I think most people recognise that we have to do different things to what we did in the past if we want to survive.

Eg We used to do loads of club TTs on the amersham road, but not many people want to do them now, especially new members. FWIW I haven't done one on there for a few years on there as the traffic is a bit aggressive on the SC bit near gt miss.

the traffic is a bit aggressive

Spending every weekend for 3 years riding up and down this road didn't help my opinion of British drivers.

Interesting to see this discussion on courses and road upkeep. LVCC had to cancel it's last 2 road races owing to weather, road works, and a poor road surface. Regarding TTs, we held an event on the E1 25 course on Sunday. The road surface on parts of the course is deteriorating and I suspect will worsen. We had to warn riders about a particular stretch of the course before they set off.

Some new riders took part, interestingly they were triathletes, but not a huge field. It will be interesting to see how many entrants we get for our E2 10 ( fast course) event next month.

the busiest thread in the Rides and Races forum is the Pro Cycling column.

Isn't that the same as every sport though? Football, cricket, etc are all watched by lots more people than actually play the games. Unlike those silly activities though there's probably a lot more people 'just cycling' with no interest in bike racing.

Won't the E2 still close at something not far above 20:00? If not I am out of touch!

F11/10 the other day closed on sub 21:00, no reason for the E2 to be different.

Track racing (at HHV at least), circuit races and CX are all booming. UK roads are shit and the drivers are worse, I did the SE test event RR last month around Alfold and it was a joke in so many ways. TTs have become a marginal gains money pit.

the future does not look hopeful

I'm old enough (and therefore you must be) to have seen TT numbers go well below current levels and then recover to the point where even average courses get full fields. I'm seeing plenty of names I don't recognise on start sheets. People have been predicting the death of timetrialling since before the formation of the RRC, which is 99 years ago next week.

TTs have become a marginal gains money pit

Only for people who let themselves get sucked in to that, and 'twas ever thus. For everybody else, they remain a very cheap (in both money and time) way to hold an honest contest against yourself.

TTs have become a marginal gains money pit.

Yeah, this is the way I've been viewing it for a few years now. But when I started I was never competing against anyone but myself anyway so no biggie. But once you win some, winning is nice and you want more. I don't have enough time to test though so I have my 300mi 12hr goal and that's about it for me. I've resigned myself to minor places for events now.

I am not the organiser so I don't know what the closing time will be. However, we are going to have a larger field than our cancelled May event.