Scottish TTT Championship - Race Report
24 August 2019
The Scottish National Team Time Trial Championships took place in Forfar on the 24th of August and ERC had five teams competing. A team member of each race has given us a quick report of their team's performance at the race. Many thanks to Marting Hariss of Discovery Juniors Cycling Club for organising the event, and 5311 Media for taking photos on the day. Full results of the race can be found here.
Women's A Team
The Women's "A" team consisted of Lucie, Hilary, Morgan and Juli - they were super fast, but only one had ever done a TT before alone a TTT. Not ideal you might say, but they were motivated and I was excited to see what we could do.
On the day of the TTT we were prepared, practices had gone well, clip-on bars and funny overshoes applied. Lucie had her proper TT rig, and the rest with road bikes suitably tweaked for the day's race. The team worked well with smooth changes and good communication for the 40mile course.
Unfortunately, Lucie didn’t finish, a touch of wheels in the closing kilometre sent me flying into a verge but the girls saved it and Managed to sprint to the line - a tough ask for Juli who had just pulled a huge turn up the final ramp of the course and had planned to leave the three other ladies to finish the job!
The team delivered the best result for ERC, finishing 4th overall with a time of 1:37:23.
Men's A Team
The "A" Team consisted of Alan, Sandy, Steve and Ken.
Pacing over the two 20 mile laps went well as their times on the both although the first was a bit more textbook TTTing with all 4 riders in good formation. The second was a case of eeking the most out of the team which was down to three in the home stretch as Sandy and Alan shared the turns with Ken providing the pacing advice needed to get the three riders home together, joined by a slightly secondhand looking Steve not long after.
They were the fasted ERC team on the day, finishing in 7th place with a time of 1:22:54.
Women's B Team
A few months ago, Joanne Merrit had asked if we could put a team together for the TTT Champs as we were starting to ride regularly together. The Women's "B" team consisted of Hollie, Jo, Sandra Murdoch, and Francesca Osowska.
Leading up to the race, they fitted in a few training sessions that would allow the team to get a feel for it. It was a very nerve-wracking for Hollie as she had never ridden in a TTT before and did not want to let anyone down during the race!
A couple of weeks prior, Sandra had become very ill, so we all thought it would be best she recovered properly instead of forcing herself to do it and make it worse.
Race day finally came and for three girls on road bikes a time of 1:44:42 was enough to make us smile, and finish 6th! The three of us felt strong and are very well matched on the bike, so taking our turns was smooth, and the pace suited us all very well. The event organisation was slick, and the weather was perfect too! All in all, an enjoyable day out and the team can’t wait to do it again.
Men's B Team
The Men's "B" Team consisted of Graham, Lewis, Scott and Euan. They had managed to squeeze a couple of practices during the Tranent 10 in the weeks before and were feeling confident of a good performance - even if half the team had injured knees!
Unfortunately, nine miles into the 40-mile course, Euan hit a pothole hard causing a puncture so it was down to the remaining three to finish from there. The extra efforts on the front took their toll with Scott, then Lewis suffering in the final miles while Graham kept the pace of the team up.
The team were happy with their performance considering the circumstances and finished 15th with a time of 1:28:59.
Junior Men's Team
Edinburgh RC also entered a junior team into the Scottish TTT championships. The group consisted of Hamish, Kyle, Alex and Louie. The team had all rode the 6 stage international tour - Junior tour of Ireland earlier in the summer so knew each other well.
We had a plan and a pacing strategy created at a practice TTT session earlier and the week which we would need to stick to if we had a chance of a decent time with 3/4 of the team on road bikes! We worked well all the way with Kyle and Louie pulling harder on the flat and downhill sections, while the Hamish and Alex used their climbing legs to take longer pulls on the uphill segments. With 5km to go Hamish put in a significant effort and then dropped off, leaving us down to three men to finish. We held our pace and finished with a time of 1:25:54 for the 38 miles, and finishing 11th overall. The team were super happy with their time and aim to enter more TTT’s in the future.