Time Trials: ultimate test of race fever
It seems like the TT is the best measure of ones pure strength.
People like to call it a boring event or say they can hardly tolerate them, but really that’s just because they’re lazy. It’s a mental game. And the results can be as thrilling as any bike race. And they’re always more honest.
Basically, a TT is the breakaway portion of a bike race, for the whole time.
It’s where it’s at. It separates the wannabes from the throwdowns.
It’s quite possible to attack a TT, to ride it with panache and ferocity.
So why not give it a try next time, instead of complaining about it?
It doesn’t seem like riders could call themselves developed if they can’t ride in a TT like they do when solo breaking, chasing or bridging. Every winner uses TT skills quite often.
(Heck, even field sprinters have to sometimes.)
If guys do well in a wide range of other aspects of cycling then ‘fall apart’ in a TT, I can only think that they’re immature, still developing.
If they’re only sprinters or climbers, then I could see that a TT would simply reveal their weakness. However, I would think that a climber would do quite well in many TdF type TTs, which probably have some decent hills in them. They would tend to suffer only in the rouleur courses. Can’t most climbers go well alone? Maybe you spend half of climbing events under pace, but I bet most climbers can go solo.
It seems like only pure sprinters then, who need to wheelsuck, would have a good excuse for bad TT’s.
Basically, when riders flub TT’s isn’t it mostly due to the mental component? And isn’t that part fairly readily trained? Who hasn’t had to get psyched to chase after a mechanical or to succeed at bridging or do any kind of solo breakaway?
So then except for sprinters, bad TTers would tend to be those who are inexperienced.
Oh well, I suppose some folks just plain rise to different occasions differently. You’d think with pros, though, that they’d mostly be able to optimize such a fair test of all-around skill. It is by no means an unusual mode of riding, unlike coming off the front of a train in the last 100 meters. The psyche and test of TT is pretty much the standard stuff of bike racing, isn’t it?
