Time Trial vs. Group Cycling

Update July 25, 2024: One of the passengers mentioned below asked me not to show any pictures of him since he didn’t give his consent. He’s absolutely right, and I sincerely apologize for this. I’ll be removing those pictures immediately.

Recently, it was time for the Midsummer Night Time Trial in Husum again. Once a year, there’s the long 52-kilometer time trial hosted by Manni as part of the Time Trial Series North.

Because the weather was expected to be good and I wanted some pictures of my new ride, I brought my better half along to take photos. With nine laps of roughly six kilometers each, it seemed promising. Besides getting a bunch of photos for #timetrialtuesday on Instagram, I wanted to test if I needed to adjust my position for such long events. Spoiler: Nope.

Once I had recovered, which took a while, Mrs. Busch mentioned that while she got some great photos, I was rarely alone in any of them. I had already noticed some odd dynamics during the race, and at the finish, there was a lot of discussion and some complaints. But seeing it in photos is quite different from experiencing it during the race, where I’m always looking sideways. By the ninth lap, I was so exhausted I barely noticed who was flying past me towards the finish while I was completey wasted.

In short: Some fellow cyclists didn’t quite grasp the concept of a time trial and seemed to think they were in a mix of a taxi service and a friendly game of tag. It’s a bit of a problem when you’re caught in every lap by the camera.

I’m using this as an opportunity for a “Netiquette of Time Trialing” guide, in case you get overtaken because someone is faster. Essentially, it means not drafting but keeping a side and forward distance and letting yourself fall back. After all, you’re being overtaken because you’re not as fast as the overtaker.

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Let’s get started with a little slideshow, folks:

Here, a rider with a yellow helmet has just overtaken a rider in blue, who started 30 seconds ahead, and is gearing up to overtake the rider in white, who started a minute earlier.

Six kilometers later, both overtaken riders are still trying not to ride directly behind the rider with the yellow helmet. It’s not going great. In the background, you can see someone riding outside the slipstream, looking amazed.

This is how it should look if everyone was indeed equally fast, spread out across the eight or so meters of road width. Unfortunately, this scenario behind me was rare that evening. I usually don’t get so many messages afterwards, indicating the drafting annoyed quite a few riders passed by the express train.

The Basics aka The Rules

Depending on the sport and association (cycling or triathlon, and within those, it varies by organizer), there are different distances to maintain to avoid benefiting from the leading rider’s performance. This practice is known as drafting, which is cheating in a time trial event, as it allows one to ride faster with less effort.

How much difference does it make? My aero buddy Jean-Paul Ballard from Swiss Side ran a simulation in 2017, showing that at five meters, you save around 50 watts, and even at ten meters, which many consider outside the questionable range, you still save around 30 watts. This is under windless conditions, which we had recently in Husum.

The industry-standard testing and simulation speed for this is always 45 km/h, which was realistic for the recent event, even though I had a 47 km/h average at the end. With drafting, the gains would be even higher.

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Brief Intermission – Morally-Loaded Advertisement
Intentional drafting is cheating. JP from Swiss Side always says #draftingisdoping in long-distance triathlon. And doping just sucks. That’s why I’ve had the right socks in my shop for years claiming that dopers stink. all of them. period! These are made in Europe, come from a top manufacturer, fit perfectly, and are available in neon yellow, neon pink, and black. From personal experience, I can say they always put the right people in their place.

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Back to the Main Story

So, what’s the rider with the yellow helmet trying to say? The more I think about it and the more riders contact me about that day, the more I wonder how brazenly one can act in post-work sports.

I haven’t done road races for ages, partly because some experts tend to sit at the back without taking the lead until they think it’s time to sprint. There are more “sprint kings” among the lower categories than you’d think.

And even though it’s a “tactic” in triathlon nowadays, I find the resulting slow trains embarrassing, whether in professional or age group races.

I usually appreciate the fair #fratzengeballer (hard, honest racing) in time trials. The rules aren’t that complicated: each person for themselves and giving it their all. If someone is faster, so be it. Congrats to Konstantin Reeck, who was faster again. But we are getting there! You can check out the results and lap times here.

Oh, and if you need a taxi in Hamburg, call 666666. I still don’t have a taxi sign on my helmet, despite it being yellow.

Despite this unpleasant part, Husum was worth the trip. The new bike rides fantastically, I haven’t pushed myself like that in a long time, and next week we’re back at it again.