Time Trial / Time Trialling / TT

Anyone who beats the hour on the tough West of Windsor 25 course will feel pleased with themselves. Last Sunday Rob Gilmour had two extra reasons to celebrate: first, his time of 59 minutes 9 seconds won the midsummer cup race and second, that the date was the exact 25th anniversary of his first under the hour 25.

Rob’s 1984 ride was slightly quicker (57.48) and was completed on an 82” fixed gear, but since it was done on the fast North Road (F1) course it was possibly less of an athletic achievement than his short 59 this year on a course which no one will ever describe as fast.

The second fastest ride came from David Brown, a young sports science student who was just 38 seconds outside the hour. As yet David has shown no interest in single gear bikes, so let us move on to third placed rider. 

Another man chasing the hour was Paul Holdsworth who had elected to ride a basic fixed wheel ‘athletes’ bike. This concept, which seeks to discover what a rider can do without modern aids, seems to be gaining some acceptance in the cycling world and it is perhaps an inevitable reaction against the expense and complexity of contemporary practice.
Paul had done 1.02.03 the previous week on this bike and course and was making a determined effort to achieve the magic ‘59’ this Sunday, raising his gear from 86.8’’ to 93’’ and doubtless gritting his teeth a little harder. The result was 1.0.48, close, but no cigar; it gave him third place.
Afterwards it was clear that although he looked effortlessly stylish from the roadside, it had not been an easy 25 miles. “I feel like I’ve just ridden a hard 50” he said, and complained that he had found his position holding the bottom of the old style dropped bars uncomfortable compared with the modern set up with clip ons and arm rests. I have no doubt that with a little tweaking of position and perhaps a slightly better day he will achieve his ‘athletes’ sub hour ride.


The forum’s own ‘Mitre Tester’ also faced our timekeeper on Sunday, and recorded a very creditable 1.5.46 which would have placed him eighth out of 23 starters. It should be remembered that the majority of the field were on modern TT bikes and that not everyone would regard this course as suitable for fixed. Mitre Tester said that he felt the conditions were rather harder than they had been the previous week in the Maidenhead event since there was a headwind on the most exposed section of the course, and he thought this showed the high quality of Holdsworth’s ride as he had actually improved his time by over a minute.

Paul Holdsworth would very probably have won this event if he had used a modern time trial bike; he sacrificed this chance by riding the ‘athletes’ machine, but by doing so he added a lot of interest to what would otherwise have been a mundane club TT.