The second club event in 2026, and I was wondering how I'd go. The start list was a modest 8 riders, two of whom were definitely faster than me, and two who's likely performance was unknown to me.

I slected the Cerveo P3 with the Hed trispokes for this event as I thought the P5 with its very deep section front wheel would be a bit of a handful in the windy conditions (again) forecast for this event. After riding out to the event, I was pretty sure that for the most part the wind would be a cross-wind. And so it proved - the data confirms this nicely.

Well, I've been neglecting this blog again. Since the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25 in early March, I've only ridden one time trial before this evening's opening club event in the 2026 NBRC time trial series. That event was the N&DCA '10' on the Brogborough course, and was on pretty nice warm afternoon. Sadly, I underperformed spectacularly, finishing in 24:42 after I found I couldn't ride comfortably in the aero extensions and had to ride on the base bars pretty much all the way round. For this evening's time trial I rode my backup TT bike, the venerable Cervelo P3.

I selected the P3 because it's fitted with front and rear trispokes, a wheelset more suitable for the strong wind forecast for this evening than the wheels I have in my main TT bike. This was my first ride using the new Favero Assioma Pro RL power meter pedals. There have been a number of reviews online of the Assioma Pro pedals (available with Shimano MTB, Shimano Road and now Look Keo pedal bodies), all of which point to excellent performance. On the basis of a single ride, it would be presumptuous to offer an opinion other than to say they performed apparently faultlessly.

This 2-up time trial has been a usual early season fixture for me, and my regular 2-up partner. The first half of the course is a pretty flat dual cariageway, and the second half of the course is rather more sporting (aka severely undulating).

In last year's event, my partner was unwell and packed, leaving me to ride on solo. In the previous year's event, we had the misfortune of my rear wheel puncture shortly after our start. So, it would be interesting to see how this year's race went.

It may have been ever so slightly warmer than the previous day, but the riders faced really bitterly cold conditions, exacerbated by a nagging cross wind for most of this event on the Stoke Hammond course. Of the seven entrants, we only had one DNS. I suspect most of us wished we had decided to DNS as we lined up at the start, shivering! 

I was riding my P3 with front and rear trispokes, 11-speed eTap and Assioma power meter pedals. I raced in a long sleeved skinsuite with kneewarmers and a long sleeve baselayer. Winter overshoes and light gloves.

 This event was 24.5km over the Triple Twist Zwift course, and was the last CTT Zwift TT before a Christmas break. This course features a couple of fairly stiff climbs. I found both of the climbs pretty good for keeping a good effort going. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the corresponding descents, when my power sagged pretty badly.

Last week's event was something of a disaster from a technical standpoint. Of the three instances of this event (Wednesday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon) I entered the Saturday morning event. I was out in the garage in good time for a warmup before heading over to the event. Thirty seconds before I was to start, the system announced I needed to pair an HRM - which is strictly enforced by the organisers. That was odd, because I had one paired. Anyway, I got bounced from the race as I didn't have enough time to re-pair the HRM.

So I entered the 4pm event. And the same thing happened, except both power and HRM apparently got disconnected seconds before the off. I found this mighty frustrating since I'd been looking forward to the rather mountainous course in Innsbruck. But what was going on?

For the third weekend in a row, I lined up for one of the CTT winter series. This time we were on three laps of the Richmond Fan Flats course. I made sure to have a look at the course, which was good because there was a significant lean-in before the first of the three laps. In fact, I used the warmup to ride round the lead-in and first lap.

As you'd expect from the name, it's a pretty flat course though perhaps a bit more undulating than Tempus Fugit used for the first event. Despite feeling quite good for this event, it didn't go quite according to plan.

After last week's Zwift time trial which was held on a pretty much pan-flat course, I was hoping for some improvement. Of course I rode last week's event after a week away with limited training and the day after a horrible journey home, which I think one must bear in mind. Also, I muffed the last few km, when I thought I'd finished with a couple of km still to go.

This week's time trial was on a fairly hilly course: Watopia's Triple Twist. 24.3km with about 201m total ascent. I was hoping that the undulations in this route, together with the two climbs might make the riding better resemble riding in real life than last week's route. And overall, I think it did. I still find holding consistent power rather harder in Zwift than on the road.

It's that time of year when Zwift riding is pre-eminent in the weekly schedule - and the CTT have set up a Winter Series of time trials on Zwift, Unlike the VTTA series I've ridden for the last couple of winters, they've selected a range of courses from flat to hilly, which promises to be a bit more interesting that riding the super flat Tempus Fugit course week in, week out as the VTTA have used.

That said, the first event was indeed on Tempus Fugit, but with a different finish point than the VTTA used last year, at 20km. Approaching this ride, I really wasn't sure how ready i was for it: after the best part of a week away from home with real disruption to my training routine and with a rather stressful journey home the day prior, most of my rHR and HRV metrics were a bit off kilter.

I have a number of wheels which have Shimano compatible 8 to 10 speed freehub bodies. Two of these wheels are intended for use in a time trial bike with 11-speed systems, and one is the new rear wheel bought for the Longstaff tandem (LINK).  Accordingly I’ve spent a bit of time figuring out to upgrade these wheels to 11 speed.

Freehubs designed for 8 to 10 speed cassettes are very slightly shorted than those designed for 11 speed cassettes. They can fit standard Shimano cassettes from 7 to 10 speed, requiring a spacer in some cases. You can fit 11 speed cassettes if you drop out one of the cogs. This might not be the best solution for a racing wheel, but works fine if you’re not focussing on smallest cogs.

Another bout of modifications to our summer tandem, resulting in a rather mixed transmission: 11-speed Shimano cassette (reduced to 10-speed), Shimano 105 levers and rear mech, a 1990s Campagnolo tandem chainset and triple front mech, KMC chain, new Campagnolo BBs.

Two Bossard Wheelers 10 mile time trials were added to the calendar recently, both on the F15/10 - probably the closest time trial course to where I live. I entered both of them (4th and 11th October).

The first was abandoned in the face of Storm Amy.

Together with my regular 2-up partner Gerry, I rode the famous Duo Normand time trial every year from 2003 to 2019, bar one. In 2020, it was absent from the calendar owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. It didn't reappear in the following years, and most of us thought it had gone for good. But in mid-2025, it was announced that it would return on 21st September 2025, on a revised course of 40km. With the announcement coming quite late in the year, fewer teams than in the past were able to enter, with very few from the UK. But despite advancing years and dubious fitness, Team Grumpy decided to cross the Channel for another ride in the this splendid event. We were not disappointed.

In September 2003 I first rode the Duo Normand, a well-established 2-up team time trial in the Normandy countryside around Marigny. My teammate for that, and every subsequent Duo Normand ride, was my regular 2-up partner. We semi-seriously style ourselves Team Grumpy, and we have a Team Grumpy website. We rode the Duo Normand every year from 2003 to 2019, except for one year. The high point was our victory in the Corporatif category in 2010, but since then age has brought with it diminishing returns.

Team Grumpy on the way to victory in the 2010 Duo Normand, soundtracked by a cacophony of infants and church bells, but total indifference from the crowd.

I switched to Athletica.ai as my preferred training platform pretty much a year ago, and aside from a brief absence from the platform (after which I had to start pretty much from scratch) I’ve found it pretty good on the whole. Athletica seems to be well-rooted in the science of training, with a significant reliance on HIIT workouts. A typical workout schedule for me generally has one HIIT workout each week (shown below via intervals.icu below, click the image to enlarge).

This was the final event in our series of evening club events, and attracted 13 entries (though one didn’t start owing to illness. Through the day we’d had some spectacular thunderstorms and extremely blustery conditions with gusts of up to 48mph. Clearly not ideal, but at least by the time we started the event things had calmed down, and despite there being several heavy showers tracking around Cranfield, I think all the riders completed the course without getting wet.

For my part, I found the outward leg down to Newport Pagnell rather tough and the still rather gusty wind made it impossible to keep on the aero extensions. I was caught at the turn for a minute by a fast rider on a road bike. Things were a bit better on the return leg and I was making better progress to the finish. I ended up in third place with 25:52, good enough for second on veteran standard.

This evening ’10’ came after a fortnight of dealing with a right leg injury (bizarrely incurred while mounting the tandem) and a longer period of family related stress, both significantly denting my training, all mixed in with a few hospital appointments.

Last week, I rode a club event on the Cranfield course, which I won with a narrow margin, but at some cost to my right leg’s recovery. Frankly I didn’t really pull out a strong performance that evening. So I was keen to see how I was going via this evening’s event.

This review really focusses on  the optical HR data collection with my newly purchased Polar Vantage V3 watch.

Last autumn, I bought a Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch, largely to collect data that was then pulled in by Athletica.ai, such as sleep, resting HR and HRV. Watches have never really been a maor part of my sports data collection - because I almost explusively train on a bike, I generally collect data via a Garmin Edge bike computer (currently an 840), or via trainer software such as Zwift. So, why go back to Polar, specifically the Vantage V3?

I noticed the other day, via the GP Lama YouTube channel that the latest firmware update for the Garmin/Tacx Neo 3M trainer (and, I think, the version 2 and 2T Neo trainers) enables virtual shifting on the Zwift platform.

I run Zwift on an AppleTV in my garage using a Tacx Neo 3M trainer, and I experience some issues. Firstly, the AppleTV bluetooth remote buttons are gradually breaking, presumably an accretion of sweat damage. Replacements aren’t cheap (and might just go the same way). Secondly, I often have a bit of trouble with jumping gears while training, particularly in intense intervals.

I was rather pleased to have more moderate weather for this event - rather than hitting the 30 degree mark, we were in the low 20s. I looked at the weather and decided it was sufficiently blustery that I needed to take care with my front wheel choice. In the end I think that my decision to ride the P3C with its Hed trispokes was wise. In any case, I want to get some rides on on it to do any fine-tuning before the Duo Normand (if they ever open entries).

The opening section along the bumpy University Way ends with a left turn onto the road to North Crawley and Newport Pagnell (we turn just after the 'civic amenity site'. Much of this leg is downhill, but the expected speed didn't really materialise because of the haed wind. Additionally it was quite difficult to see the many road defects in the evening sun. This particularly bad as you approach North Crawley.