Need help with strategy and nutrition for my first time trial race

Hi everyone. I will be racing a 30km time trial in 4 days. It will be my first ever race and i was hoping if i could get some tips from you pros. How should i warm up? Any openers from trainerroad workouts and when should i do them? How should my pacing be like in terms of power and RPE? What about nutrition? Do people eat on TT races? Thank you so much in advance. Pretty nervous! Any advice from you guys would be much appreciated @chad @Nate_Pearson

I like a 30min warm up, in a low gear with sprints. I’m doing it on the road this year but a turbo is more effective just not allowed just now at most of the UK TTs.
I prefer to prehydrate and not take anything on the bike for a 25mile (40km) tt, it seems that most folk don’t but some will take an aero bottle to drink and Ive never seen anbody take anything for a 10mile (16.6km) tt. For a 30km tt (I’ve done a few sporting TTs around that distance, I wouldn’t carry a bottle but you’ll know yourself better if you need one. Most of all relax and enjoy :muscle:

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Welcome to the wonderful world of TTing! I agree with @HLaB above, I wouldn’t take anything to eat or drink on a 20 mile TT, especially on a cool day. (You don’t mention anything about the course profile, so I’m assuming it’s a typical UK rolling terrain or flat course). My warm up is shorter than theirs, I just try and ride for 10 mins and work up to my threshold power, pretty much like the warm ups on the TR workouts, but this is an aspect of my performance that I was going to experiment with this year.

In terms of pacing and RPE, I’d shoot for your FTP over this distance - it’s likely to take you an hour or less. You will probably know how this feels to you from your workouts. You may find yourself pushing a little more on the uphills, but you will recover a little on the downhills. Don’t go out too hard - after the initial sprint, settle down into as steady an effort as possible and wait for the pain to come to you! Personally, I find heart rate and RPE easier to keep constant compared to power - on my local course I’ve turned in times within a few seconds of each other riding either to RPE 8 or my threshold heart rate or power.

Stay in your aero position as much as possible, even uphill, for me it’s noticeably faster unless I’m traveling at less than 12mph, but it feels strange. Look where you’re going and have fun :slightly_smiling_face:

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Oh, and give yourself plenty of faffing around time before your start time - nothing worse than trying to get velosocks on in a hurry or stressing about where the start line is or how to sign in or pin your number on or deal with a minor mechanical issues or any of the other myriad of things that seem to afflict me before I ride my bike a short distance.

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Thank you very much!!!

Thank you for the tips!!

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Let us know how you get on, and good luck!