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.