Virtual World Time Trial Championships

In my pursuit to qualify for the world’s toughest bicycle race – the 3,000 mile Race Across America – I’ll be taking on the 24hr virtual World Time Trial Championships on the 16th & 17th of January.

What is it?

The 6-12-24 Hour World Time Trial Championships (WTTC) are held every November in Borrego Springs, a quiet Southern California resort community. Racers from around the world gather to determine who is the fastest in the world, to set personal records, and to spend time with friends in the bicycle racing community.

The course is flat and fast, featuring a main loop of 18.0 miles with 347’ of elevation change and a finishing loop of 4.8 miles with 63’ of elevation change. The riders set out to complete many miles as possible in 6, 12 or 24 hours.

Now, you’ll notice it’s neither November nor am I travelling to California, so how am I riding the WTTC?

Covid has pushed this event, like many others, to be hosted virtually and the team at FulGaz are once again taking on the mammoth task of hosting a 24hr challenge. The course has been filmed, so we’ll be riding around the 18 mile loop just from the relative comfort of our own homes.

FulGaz will be hosting the vWTTC event this year

What do I need to do?

Much like the vRevolve24 last year, I’ll be hoping to qualify for the Race Across America with this event. To qualify I’ll need to cycle over 400 miles (643km) in the 24hr period.

The event starts at 17:00pm GMT Saturday and runs through to Sunday 17:00pm. I’ll share Leaderboard links when they are published, so you can see how I’m getting on over the course of the weekend.

Can I do it?

At the end of the 24hr vRevolve event I’d cycled 363 miles (585km), which was an agonising 15km short of the qualifying distance. This event requires a further 37 miles on top of what I achieved there, so yes “can I do it” it would be a fair question to ask.

What’s different? As I said above Borrego Springs is a flat, lapped course. vRevovle had a significant amount of elevation gain and comprised laps of 6 different courses, which added a few minutes to switch from one to the next.

I learnt a lot from vRevolve so I hope to bring that in to this event – I have confidence in my training (thanks to Coach Pav Bryan at Spokes), my kit (from dhb) and nutrition (I use KMC and Reflex among others). I know what I’ve got to do to meet this challenge.

Guy’s indoor set up, otherwise known as the ‘Gain Cave’

Donate

While this is my goal, my dream I want it to mean something. So I suffer so someone else doesn’t have to – these challenges are all to raise money and awareness for two amazing Charities here in Aylesbury. I hope to raise at least £2,022 for each organisation on my Road to RAAM in 2022;

The Pace Centre is a ground-breaking children’s charity that transforms the lives of children and young people with motor disorders, such as cerebral palsy.

Action4Youth is a youth charity providing positive and transformational experiences, activities, programmes and courses which help and inspire young people.