The Time Trial Thread

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BeirutTaxi said:

Hi everyone,

I would be grateful for some advice RE: time trial wheels.

What are the pros and cons of running a disc rear wheel over a 80mm-90mm profile wheel?

I'm looking at the HED Jet 9 (£750) and the HED Jet C2 disc (£900) - although if there are better wheels for the money I would be grateful for guidance

Kind regards,

Matt

No cons, all pros.

The HED discs are among the fastest you can buy.

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Got a couple of fast tens coming up before I call time on this season. Probs going to do one of those on my roadbike for pure interest sake, be interesting to see how much slower I am.

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I actually did not in the end. One even was cancelled due to weather so I went all in on the TT bike despite not really having done much on it I did managed a PB of 18:20

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Weight doesn't really matter much flat TT's. Unless of course it is a big reason why someone might not be that aero...

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Matt_N said:

Conversations about watts and speed can get a bit cringey but...

Watts to drag is more important for TT’ing.

As a comparison I did 24:24 on a sporting 10 last night off 279w NP (450ft elevation gain). On a flat course that would probably be more like 23:40ish.

302w NP got me a 23:21 on a flatter course last year. I’m not far from Wales and would like to go and try the R10/17 at some point later in the year to see how far into the 22s I can get.

It's also not really that useful these days I find. The times people are now doing off small numbers are incredible given the aero advancements people are making.

A guy in my club did the same time as me (18.20,I guess the one at the top of this page ha) on a ten course in Hants on something like 60w less, he is a bit smaller than me but not by much, but has invested a lot of time in the latest kit and position, I did all that about 5 or 6 years ago but the game has moved on even further! So it does prove that even wattage numbers don't mean all that much these days.

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There's also usually vet categories in CTT events. I regularly got 'outearned' so to speak even when I won events by some git who had snuck the best vet on standard time etc etc. TTing really is a sport run by the cyclist of yesteryear in many senses, and most events I used to go to would have a huge number of more senior riders. I suppose the whole sport came about from when road racing was banned or similar and secret course codes were used (though not so secret these days), so the scene is mostly still represented at the organisational level by that era.

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Open Time Trials are absolutely a race of two parts, those racing themselves, and those racing to win (there's probably less than ten of the latter in any given field). In a normal TT field of perhaps 100 riders, a rider capable of winning an Open will already know within a couple of places where they're going to finish barring disaster, and very often know the win is in the bag, just a case of how much by. Strange in that sense. The pro TT's are very very different in that regard.

I'm hoping I can get back onto the TT bike (aka fit into my old skinsuit) later this year but in the last 3 years or so the game has moved on considerably in the aero side of things.