The David Millar TT System, Element 4: contextual training

This is a promoted post in association with David Millar and A1 Members.

A time trial is probably one of the easiest disciplines in bike racing to train for outside of track, because it’s possible to replicate the demands of a TT quite well during training sessions.

Unlike training for a road race, which is damn near impossible to recreate outside of the actual race day, everything can be structured and applied in your TT training sessions to prepare your body and mind for the particular event you’re targeting.

However, a large proportion of riders also compete in road and other cycling disciplines, and the specific training for TT has to be factored into their overall training plan. That plan has to be both developed and implemented with two unique contexts in mind: you, and the nature of time trial racing.

You can read any number of research papers and training articles on how to develop your time trial speed, but the vast majority boil down to the same thing. The main fitness component is primarily your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) – the maximum effort your system can sustain over your TT distance. Training for this is no great secret: it hurts a lot and there are only a few basic ways of doing it well.

However, much of this research and a lot of training programmes are based on the assumption of a controlled environment. Yes, some of this training can be done on a home trainer, or in a gym or lab, and this has certain advantages. Apart from being out of the weather, for example, very precise workouts can be done.