Scottish National Team Time Trial Champs

Scottish National Team Time Trial Championships - August 29th 2021

Words by Sam Wilson

I would still class myself as a bit of a newbie to the strange world that is TT riding. Let alone the even stranger world that is Team Time Trialling. So this might be better informed by some of the other guys who rode today, however I love a race report and it went well, so couldn’t help myself from writing…

Really it started on Saturday evening with the taping up of the bolt holes on the bike. I have been turning up to Thursday night TTT training in full race kit (disc wheel, dorky helmet, overshoes and skinsuit) for weeks and realised that plenty of our other guys were doing the sessions with road helmets and standard kit… The training is hard enough, and I knew everyone would be in full race kit today, so I had to tape up every last bolt hole, leading edge and scratchy bit of paint in an effort to find that last watt... to reassure myself that I could keep up with the boys on the day.

The alarm went off at 05:15. A glass of orange juice, porridge with blueberries and a banana for breakfast. The car was loaded up from the night before and ready to go. Legs, check. Bike, Check. Water Bottle, Check. Off to Forfar.

Made it to the Forfar Community Campus carpark and Race HQ in plenty time, and decided to drive the course to get a feel for it. In my still limited TT experience, I would describe the Forfar course as ‘Not Great’. It’s twisty and undulating, and the road surface leaves a lot to be desired in places, quite a few blind bends and a few left hand junctions to deal with, two of which riders didn’t have right of way (but I suppose it’s the same for everyone right?). One huge issue that I spotted right away was a temporary two way set of lights about 200m after the proposed start line… surely not… more on that later.

To make up for that, the weather today was spot on, and was probably about as perfect as you could ask for, for a ride on a TT bike. Virtually no wind, clear visibility (once the morning M90 mist burnt off), and 14 degrees, which was going to be nice and comfortable when pushing efforts on the front.

Driving back towards Forfar in the car I notice a sign (“cycle event” and an arrow off to the left) This was not where I had expected it to be and it appeared a lot earlier than the proposed turn in the roadbook. Also, it almost looked like it pointed up someone’s gravel driveway. Think the type of “road” that might feature in a Peruvian Top Gear Special or the kind of “road” that Murphy likes to work into the MRCC social ride every now and then just to keep people on their toes. Surely not in the Scottish National TTT champs at 30mph downhill on a TT bike? I assumed that the sign must have been a mistake and carried on into Forfar and back to HQ.

By now the carpark was filling up, and I spotted quite a lot of familiar Blue and Gold, so knew exactly where to park! Big Darren met me straight out the car and passed on race numbers to save me signing in. Bike out the car, turbo trainer set up and second banana of the day on the way down I heard the news that the course has been modified due to the roadworks, and that yes, that sign earlier on was pointing the right way. We wouldn’t come into Forfar at the end of lap one, and would instead take the world’s sketchiest, twisty, turny, gravelly, shortcut to skip the roadworks (To be fair to the organisers, it was the only option and was much better than not racing at all)

There was a great turn out today. I think more teams from MRCC than any other club, at 5 teams in total. I think that means 20 riders turned up in blue and gold… which is mad given it’s a just a morning of torture…!

Deep Heat on the legs and Vapo-Rub on my chest is part of my pre-race prep, so once I was suitably lathered up went for a 20 minute spin-up on the turbo. Ipod in, the music choice was Airborne – Stand up for Rock and Roll and Rev Theory – Hell Yeah, which are my two go to “lets dig in” tunes (They are so overused in the garage pain cave that I can’t listen to them without thinking of a 20 minute test on the turbo now)

Our start time was 10:03

MRCC B – Order on the road

Hamish

Darren

Alasdair

Sam

We rolled out to the start line as a four, only to find it sooner than expected and only adding to a bit of congestion at the line. We did arrive in time to see another MRCC team only just make it to the line in a three with a couple of seconds to spare. I hope you guys managed to settle into a rhythm after that stressy start! We decided to double back for a quick spin to keep warm. And lined up on the line the second time around. 10 seconds…

And we were off, all the Thursday night sessions meant we settled down into a rhythm as a team pretty quickly. The first part of the course is sweeping, fairly sheltered at first and with a slight grade. We managed the efforts well to roughly 45 seconds each on the front with one tricky incident between the start and the first junction. Within the first couple of miles, we flew past the junction where the end of lap one would begin lap two. An orange and blue team came barrelling out of the junction into our path, the first three riders sticking to the left to allow them to pick up pace safely. The fourth rider drifted way across to the centre line while accelerating. I was on the front and he was met by a scream of ‘Riders’ from me, along with a few words best not typed here, as we flew past at 30mph. Really scrappy cycling from them IMO, but we all survived and settled back into order. Other than that, I think we actually overtook a couple of teams before the first junction and had a good first stint.

I believe the same team that had just about taken us out earlier then came flying through just before the first junction with a lot of shouting and more words best not typed [As I write this I’ve just heard they have been disqualified – No idea what for, but what goes around comes around and all that ;)] they looked to be going well, and on their second lap too. This wasn’t great for our order, and we ended up scrabbling back together out of that first turn. There were some shouts of ‘Easy’ from behind as we regrouped to press on. There was then a shallow gradient pedalling away from Friockheim and we watched the effort well to stay as a group, still rolling though for 45 second spells. With a bit of communication and co-ordination we got settled down after the left turn and ride back to Forfar. I was feeling really good at this point with the legs feeling like there was going to be plenty in the tank for the rest of the loop, and so did two or three longer pulls of 90 seconds on this back stretch.

Then we turned off the main road again and off onto the B999999 (apparently someone’s gravel driveway) to take the diversion back to the start of lap two. I was on the front down onto this road, and decided to stay there as long as needed, as peeling off to let the guys through would shove me onto the gravel… which I don’t think would go well. I was very conscious of the chance of an oncoming tractor (even a motorbike might have been an issue) around some of the blind bends. Thankfully we managed to avoid anything oncoming, and any big incidents on this positively boggin’ stretch of a road and got stuck into lap two, (I hear that other teams were not as lucky…)

Lap two was where the legs started to feel the efforts. Some spells ended up shorter than planned as we catered for Darren on the rises, he doesn’t get on well with climbs, but can motor back into it on the flat. I did another couple of long spells as everyone shared out the wind on the front.

We managed to get to the last left turn junction on the course, pretty much incident free and with all four riders intact, which was a result in itself. As I peeled off from the front after this last junction I noticed that we were down to three. The decision was quickly made to get the power down and press on to finish as we were, the last incline on the road up from Friockheim on lap 2 was Darren’s last pull and he had dropped off to ride back solo after a lot of hard stints on the front. 9 Miles to go, due West.

There were some big, big turns on this last home stretch. With Hammy digging really deep for some long pulls on the front. These were made harder to maintain as we were down to less recovery now, a man down. Alasdair rolled through for a couple of shorter spells later in the middle of this sector but eventually came back to doing full spells before Forfar. I was pretty much at capacity after a couple of turns towards the end and could feel the legs properly fading, but was spurred on by the fact that I knew there was only a couple of miles to go and I think we managed to roll through along this whole road without dropping pace in the end…

Being unfamiliar with Forfar, I didn’t know exactly where to expect the finish line, so when it did appear, it felt a bit anti-climactic, a white flag sticking out the top of a traffic cone marked the end of a last dig sprint for the line from all three of us. Phew…

We rolled to a stop over the line and then fist bumps all round. Darren rolled in only about 3-4 minutes later, after what must have been a pretty decent solo effort. An unexpected prize for the day was a Forfar Bridie… which only lasted about the same amount of time as a turn on the front!

Fantastic event, great training for it with a cracking bunch of people! Thanks all who took part and who have taken part in the Thursday sessions to prepare for it, has been great motivation over the last while. Where do I sign up for next year!

First Place - Ryan's Bike Surgery-Thomson Homes: 01:04:30

MRCC A: 01:09:36

MRCC B: 01:14:23

MRCC C: 01:19:28

MRCC D: 01:20:34

MRCC Newbies: 01:27:13

💛🔵🟨⭐MRCC⭐🟦🟡💙