I just did the Team time trial of the Tirreno-Adriatico with what I consider to be a pretty strong time trialling team. I had Terpstra, Dowsett, Thomas, Millar, Froome and LL Sanchez taking turns at 90 effort and 5 of them (Froome got dropped) crossed the line together. I was then rather surprised to see that I got beaten by Euskaltel and only 1 sec quicker than Farnese Vini. HOW THE HELL DO YOU DO TTT's?
Let all the strong guys ride in 20+ sec, the average guys ride in 10 sec and the weak once i let ride in 5-2 secs. And have them on 92-95 depending on profile and length
Surely its better to let the weaker riders sit at the back and do nothing? I dont think I coluld have gone any quicker than 90. They were running out of yellow bar right on the line. I wasn't expecting to win but I finished 41 secs down on the winner (Katusha)
brewers90 wrote:
Surely its better to let the weaker riders sit at the back and do nothing? I dont think I coluld have gone any quicker than 90. They were running out of yellow bar right on the line. I wasn't expecting to win but I finished 41 secs down on the winner (Katusha)
My point is that when the weak riders is in the front, the stronger guys get 2-5 seconds more rest and you can push 2-5% more from them. At least thats what i've experienced
I've watched a video tutorial and it worked quite fine for me. This is how the guy's done it:
You take your 3-4 best riders and set their time to 5 minutes (usually 3 minutes is enough, too). Then, you set them on a percentage fitting to the length and their strength (you have to try that a little, but for example on a 20km long race, 3 good time trialists should be able to pace at at least 85%). The others have to sit back.
And then you just let them ride. When the first one is empty, you let the next one do the pace. After a couple of km, you should be able to adjust the pace a little, e.g. when you plan with 4 riders, but the first is empty after a third of the race, you can increase the pace of the others a little.
You won't get good times at the checkpoints, but you should finish with a good time.
brewers90 wrote:
Surely its better to let the weaker riders sit at the back and do nothing? I dont think I coluld have gone any quicker than 90. They were running out of yellow bar right on the line. I wasn't expecting to win but I finished 41 secs down on the winner (Katusha)
My point is that when the weak riders is in the front, the stronger guys get 2-5 seconds more rest and you can push 2-5% more from them. At least thats what i've experienced
Ok, I understand that, thanks . But I really don't see how putting Kennaugh (my weakest tt'er) on the front for 5 secs can make any difference at all. As I said, with the yellow bars as they were at the end, I went as fast as I could without dropping too many riders. Kennaugh would have just slowed the pace down. And then I would have had to have gone even quicker at the end which would have dropped Dowsett and Terpstra.
@Cunego59, that's pretty much what I did but with 5 riders and then letting Sanchez cross the line first for the GC (which obviously isn't important when you're 41 secs down!). Maybe that's what I did wrong, too many riders?
Let them all take turns at the front, with the weakest only 2-3 seconds. This will allow the others riders to rest a little more. The weakest TT usually fall behind after a while so you get to finish the race only with the best ones.
Well, long TTTs (more than 30 km) work fine for me. If I have a good TTalers team I can battle for the win using the tactic from the video posted by cunego59. However, shorter time trials are almost impossible for me to do. And I also see several storywriters doing horribly bad on short time trials (finishing among the last ones).
I think that short TTT are indeed almost impossible to do well, and that should be fixed. What I do when I'm against one of those is to simply put the best TTalers on the team relaying on something like 92~94, depends on the length of the stage of course. I can't get good results, but not finish last at least (let's say 10th out of 20).
lluuiiggii wrote:
I think that short TTT are indeed almost impossible to do well, and that should be fixed. What I do when I'm against one of those is to simply put the best TTalers on the team relaying on something like 92~94, depends on the length of the stage of course. I can't get good results, but not finish last at least (let's say 10th out of 20).
My point exactly. I find the longer the time trial the easier it is.
