For comparison with article on bicycle speed records, writer details some of his own modest personal best times.
I’ve just posted an article about some of the outright speed records achieved on bicycles. I thought I’d mention some of my own ‘personal bests’, if only to show that I do have a little bit of experience.
For largely historical reasons (which I’ll try to explore a bit more some time, maybe over on Linda’s Bike Racing pages), there’s a very strong time trial tradition here in the UK. For anyone who’s not familiar with this branch of cycle sport, a time trial simply involves each rider setting out alone against the clock. Time trial stages in races like the Tour de France might be run from A to B but British competition regulations stipulate a maximum distance between start and finish, so you can’t get too much advantage by starting at the top of a mountain or riding with a tailwind all the way. They’re meant to be a fair test of the rider.
It is competitive but for many riders the main adversary is yourself and what you’re really trying to do is beat your own personal best times. Riders will often travel long distances to find the fastest courses. Unfortunately the fastest roads are often the ones with most traffic and the risks are obvious, so more recently there has been a move to promote more ‘sporting’ courses.
Anyway, my own personal bests were all set a long time ago - before the widespread use of technical innovations as tri-bars (introduced to mainstream bike racing, I think, when Greg Lemond used them in a time trial in the 1989 Tour de France) and disc wheels.
My best time for 10 miles was 23 minutes, 36 seconds. Top riders in those days were regularly clocking around 21 mins.
I did manage to ‘go under’ just twice. ‘Going under’ is, or used to be, one of the great aims for many British riders - it means to beat the hour for the ‘’blue riband’ distance of 25 miles. My best-ever time was 59.24 but on reflection I’m prouder of a 59.59 clocked on a more ‘sporting’ course closer to home. But the then UK record was 10 minutes faster!
However, in many ways I think my best time was for 50 miles - probably my best distance generally. I clocked 2.0.24 on a fast course in Yorkshire and that’s while nursing a broken spoke in the back wheel for the last 20 miles. I’ll always wonder if I could have gone faster, or whether by forcing me to ride really smoothly the broken spoke was a blessing in disguise.
I recorded 4.46.20 in my only completed 100-mile event. That included a 4-minute stop at about 80 miles to fix a puncture, and I think by breaking my rhythm at a crucial stage it cost me considerably more than that. I never completed a 12-hour event.
That was a long time ago, but only yesterday I happened to ride up and down the roads where I set my 10-mile time. I was giving it some welly, as we say in these parts, but had a light rucksack on and wasn’t riding it under full race conditions. I don’t have exact times but my bike computer gave me an average of 20.0 mph for the 5-mile leg one way and 20.7 coming back.There's life in the old legs yet...
