Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

Hounslow & District Wheelers 100 – Preview.

The Hounslow and District Wheelers promote their most significant time trial of the year next Sunday: The Ron Brown Memorial 100. (31.5.09)

Entries are substantially up this year with 95 brave men and women intending to face the timekeeper on Sunday morning. The first man off is at 6.26 am, the last at 8 am.

The course to be used is on the A31 road between Farnham and Alton. (A complete description can be found on the CTT website). HQ is Bentley Village Hall

The seeded riders and qualifying times are:

No. 120 Paul Dring (Echelon SPIUK) 3.48.10 (last year’s winner)
No. 110 Nik Bowdler (Farnboro. & Camberley) 3.37.52 (Current BBAR)(77t Chainring!)
No. 100 Paul Holdsworth (Hounslow) 3.41.39
No. 90 Sean Childs (RN&RMCA) 3.49 58
No. 115 Aran Stratton (VC St Raphael) 3.55.34.

There are six ladies on the start sheet. Last year’s winner Michelle Ayres (South Bucks RC – 4.15.57) is defending her title and the most threatening challenger appears to be Claire Ella (Lincoln Wheelers) whose qualifying time is 4.10.37.

The above is my press release for the local papers.

Forum readers might consider going to watch this. I'd be the first to admit that time trialling is not really a spectator sport, but these longer events are more interesting, especially in the closing stages, and especially if you have a sadistic streak.

Don't expect to see the fast men suffer though, they take it in their stride. They're not even on their bikes all that long, not compared with the longmarkers who are still struggling to reach the finish after five hours in the saddle.

Just a word about the seeding. I expect most of you already know about this, but for newcomers knowledge of this makes time trials easier to understand from the roadside. The normal practice (which has been used for this event) is to put the best riders on the '0' numbers (10,20,etc), and the second string riders on the fives. There is a hierachy for the others, but I won't go into this here.

The most prestigious position is to be the last starter, and this is one reason why organisers who don't have a full field start their numbering sequence from 120 and work back towards the lower numbers, as has been done on this start sheet.
 This method is not always used, but I think it is the best way to lay the field out. The chief advantage being that the main contenders for overall victory are 10 minutes apart, so if one rider on a '0' catches another seeded rider he has already taken 10 minutes out of his victim and there is unlikely to be any question as to which will record the fastest time. If they had started only one minute apart there would be a greater temptation for the caught rider to try to stay with the man who has overtaken him, leading to possible accusations of pacing.

In the past at least one competition record was disallowed because of a dispute arising from this problem.

Michelle Ayres says she intends to ride a 50 the afternoon before the Hounslow event - you might think this sounds like insanity, but there is an explanation. She tells us she intends to ride the 24, so this weekend is part of the toughening up process. I wish her luck with this venture!

If any of you do come out, don't forget to do your best not to obstruct the competitors on the course.

Hope to see some of you on Sunday.