What makes a time trial specialist?
 

What makes a good time trialist other than just being a strong rider? The difference between sprinters and climbers is easy to quantify, but I just don't understand why some riders can be average overall, but elite time trialists. For a pro example, why is Peter Sagan not one of the very best in TT? He definitely has the power needed, and he is among the very strongest riders...what holds him back? Just a lack of training for TT in particular? Can he not handle threshold as well as the TT specialists?

Different power profile. I also don't think he trains specifically for TTs.

There are also questions like holding a pristine aero profile while riding hard.

I feel left out. There should be a type 5 that's crap at everything.

Time trials are really about yourself and your preparation whereas mass start races are about your interplay with someone else. Both types of racing involve strategic thinking and planning but mass start stuff is more off the cuff and dependant on what the other guy does. Thus, I think aside from physical differences, there are big difference in the mental aspects- what people find fun or interesting.

A TT requires a lot of patience and discipline because the best way to parcel out your power is the opposite of how you'd naturally do it- you should hold back early on when you're feeling great and ramp it up when at the end when you're already suffering. In a TT you don't get the adrenaline spike prompting you to ramp up your effort in response to someone else, so you have to figure out a way to get your brain to do it anyway. To some extent, that comes naturally to some people, but it's also a matter of practice.

I think like a lot of things in cycling, two different people might start with small physiologic differences- my friend is sprinty but I am time trialy. She loves sprinting, so she does it a lot and enters lots of crits and gets better at what she's good at. But doesn't spend as much time perhaps on her TT bike and isn't as comfortable with the postion and bike handling. I love the long sustained threshold effort, so I do ride those efforts all the time and enter mostly TTs. But maybe I don't spend as much time on fast group rides so I'm not as comfortable/good at handling my road bike in traffic. It doesn't take too long for my TT skills to become way better and her mass start stuff to really become honed. Our initial physiologic differences become better trained and eventually we are metabolically quite different during race efforts.

I imagine it's like that for pros too. If they start out strongly better at one aspect of cycling and they are trying to make their way in the world of racing, they can become very impressive at the stuff they're good at. Then they have to go back and work the stuff that's less natural to them. But they have to make themselves do it, like the rest of us.

I also was just speculating to a friend today- if you want to be good at TTs only, is a sprint a harmful thing?

There is.

I'm working with a coach on my TT this season, and we don't have it in the training plan at all. It won't help, but I definitely don't think it will hurt. Just a waste of time to train for it if you're completely focused on time trials. You might do a short sprint to get back up to speed after making a turn on the course, but it's a few seconds max and you don't want to burn any matches going all out. If you're sprinting at the finish, you're doing it wrong- you should be all used up when you get there.

I am also working with my coach on TTs and we don't have it in the training plan either. I spend lots of time at threshold, getting my body and mind used to dealing with lactic acid.

However, I'm probably going to try some track stuff in the summer, and it was my trackie friend that I was speculating too. The track is going to mean working some shorter duration power and coach thinks there's some usefulness to that and to also working on starts.

But my questioning whether the sprint is harmful to my trackie friend has to do with physiology (really more a philosophical question almost, or "what's your opinion?" and opposed to "what's the answer?"). If you don't have it, you can't use it and in a TT you really don't want the power spikes. If you develop it a little, will you need more discipline/focus to not use that sprint? Ie could it be a potential distractor? I'm not talking about sprinting at the finish. I'm talking about inadvertent power burstiness if something distracts you on the course.

When does he do a TT where he cares about his result?

He is pretty darned good at it, too. For example, he was 19th (out of 198 riders) in last year's TdF TT. Being one of the 20 best time trialists in the world is as 'world-class' as it gets.

Certainly not my field, but from what I recall, there is not a consensus on whether you can convert muscle fiber from one type to the other. If it is possible, and you do a lot of sprint work, then you could transform some of your 'slow twitch' fiber into 'fast twitch' fiber, which would probably be detrimental to time trialing performance.

A friend of mine raced a stage race last weekend.

4th in the TT
14th in the RR
30th in the crit

But 6th GC.

Hmm. I don't know why he concerned himself with his TT performance. What an idiot.

You're going with a 13k effort for you example? Thats a long prologue.

That was an easy one to find. Do you disagree that he is a good time trialist? He also finished 24th (120 starters) in last year's Tour de Suisse 38km time trial.

Yep. He won the TT at last year's Tour of California, taking the leader's jersey, then went on to win the Tour. Short, technical course suited PS well and he crushed it.

I'm around some pretty good TT riders and we spend a lot of time on it. Here are a few.
-Never start to fast - know how to pace themselves.
-Don't really feels the pain, or can tolerate it - I'm not sure on this one. My wife and son never talk about pain from a TT.
-Very good feel for how hard they are going, what they have left and how much is needed to finish.
-Pretty good VO2 max
-20min W/kg is high (duh)
-Likely not the best sprinter, but pretty good
-Likely not the best climber, but pretty dood
-Perfected pedaling for the TT
-Well fitted bike
-Good bike/equipment selection for the course (hill TT, flat, curves)
-Tend to prepare/pre-ride. But some are just crazy talented. So not all do this.

Asking coach the question will settle the issue for you but here's an Old School perspective.

The ability to accelerate dynamically (jump) and hit a high terminal speed on demand with a smooth powerful precision "costs" less physiologically if worked on. Will that unbalance your carefully cultivated adaptation to the TT? Being able to get off the start and back up to cruising speed after the turn around more quickly and with less cost, zip over a slight crest or pass your minute person more quickly may be of TT benefit. Will developing a higher absolute top speed improve your TT cruise pace? Only one way to find out. ;)

Masterful TT riders like Wiggins and many others have track backgrounds, the Pursuit and (ugh) Kilo may be your best friends for road TT but the ability to read distance, judge timing and out accelerate to the line are good tools to have for any racing cyclist. Only having a hammer in the toolbox as they say...


PS: Peter Sagan won the Monument 2016 Ronde van Vlaanderen in a solo break holding off one of the finest TT riders in history Fabian Cancellara.

-Bandera

As the TT length increases he starts to drop off a bit, 2014 TdF's ITT he was middle of the pack, but it was 54km, IIRC. Not a knock on him, he's a beast at classics and shorter format tours. He's doing something right, he's got his rainbow stripes.

There are lots of "nice to haves", but all the really good TT guys I know have the following:

Big aerobic engine
Good body position (low drag)
Good pacing skills

I've seen lots of guys with good power and position who continuously finish mid pack because they don't know how to pace. Pacing on varied courses can be tricky, but many of these guys just go hard from the gun and simply can't control themselves.

I've often wondered if differences in time perception (perceived duration) have an impact on TT performance.

I would add one more, even more important, though less measurable, attribute. The ability to suffer.

The other thing to keep in mind is rider goals. The TT specialists will be going full gas for a stage win. On a long ITT, Sagan's goal is typically a mid-pack finish. He knows he can't win, conserving effort for stage wins and green jersey points is more important than a top 20 result. For the GC contenders the ITT is a major place to win or lose time on rivals so they're trying hard, but they're really only competing against each other, since most lack the raw power to really contend for an ITT podium spot.

If you look at ITT's where Sagan actually has a good reason to try, he's competitive with the best, and a beast in the TTT.

True; when added to a grand tour (or any multi-day race), strategy may dictate how much effort the rider should put into the ITT. Triathletes often take a similar approach. A guy I ride with is a cycling beast, but he admits to not being particularly fast on the TT leg, as he is a very strong runner and saves plenty for the run.

Seems like asking why the world's best marathon runners aren't the worlds fastest in the 1600m.