My First Time Trial

I’d read about the Hardriders 25 in Tim Hilton’s One More Kilometre and We’re in the Showers. The race is 25 miles over roads in south Hertfordshire that I often ride at the weekends. So I thought I’d have a go. You need to be a member of a cycling club to enter a TT, but that is easy enough. After an enjoyable club run to West Wycombe, I joined the Gregarios Superclub Ciclista (£15) and entered.

The Hardriders 25 is pretty hard. The first five miles or so takes you over three steep inclines. And it’s kind of up and down from there on. Rarely flat. No worries, I did a few practice runs. However, on the day, owing to some roadworks, the early part of the course was excluded, making it a Hardriders 19 – or Almost-as-Hardriders 19.

A time trial feels like a very British happening. A kindly lady gives you your race number, old gents put the times on a big board and you get a free cup of tea at the end. You have to pay if you want cake (I did). Just to complete the eccentricity, there is this thing called Standard Vets Time – the time you are expected to do for your age. From start to finish this race was superbly organised by the North Road Riders Cycling Club.

You queue to get the start line in single file, race number order. Super carbon TT bikes are all around. “Welcome to the arms race,” says one racer to a newcomer. I creep forward on my steel road bike to the line and decline the marshal’s offer to hold me up – as track riders are.

No drafting is allowed in a time trial, you have to do it on your own. They even separate club mates in the starting order in case you’re tempted. TTs are sometimes called the race of truth. The truth is it’s a mad dash, but for 25 miles I thought I could bear it. Well, when the results went up on the big board, I found out I didn’t win the Lantern Rouge, a £5 booby prize for coming last. In fact I came 66th out of the 69 entrants. For me the truth was a 1:04:26 time and a fair bit of fun.

I don’t think I’ll get an aero bike and enter the arms race, but I would like to make this local time trial part of my annual fixture list.

– David Shannon