A question for triathletes.

[Andrew G]

I'm not thinking of doing one or anything silly like that, it's more a question of organisation.

The bike leg of a triathlon is basically a TT, Olympic ones being 40K makes it give or take a 25 in the middle or the event. What rules are there to where you can do them, what times you can run them, size of field etc. I'm not after umpteen rules and regs it's more a case of curiosity.

With a TT it is controlled as to what roads(courses) you can use at certain times, and when you have to be off the road by - hence a lot of the early starts. Traffic counts have to be done at times when the races would be run to confirm the volume and flow, if it gets too high then you either have to not use the course, have earlier starts, limit the size of the field. It all has to have police clearance I believe as you are racing on public roads, which I think is done at the end of the preceding year when you say what races you are going to run where and when.

Is it more a case that some triathlon bike legs are later in the day for example as they use quieter roads and aren't set courses.

[ThePinkDreamMachine]

TRIs tend to be early in the day like TT. but they do try to use closed areas.

the few i have done have then been like sportiffffffs with a few marshals and arrows

often they are on race tracks and you do laps.

they often start in waves, (the swim bit so that by the time your on your bike its strung out a bit, offten broken down by age group starts)

i think all races have to have police clearance,

few things i can remember.

helmet on before you touch your bike

no drafting

you have to over take with in 30s or something like that.

if your being over taken, once they are level with you, you have to let them and drop back.

you have to mount and dis mount in certain areas or they dissQ you.

[Andrew G]

Thanks Chloe. No intention of ever doing one myself but i was curious to the style of event and organisation etc to see if there was maybe a window for cycle racing, along the lines of "well it has clearance for that". To be honest I didn't think there was and the waves, closed areas, laps, early starts etc seem to bear this out.

I see from Col that the race Sean saw was a SL TT which would've been on a sporting type course with less traffic. Therefore they could have a later start and it needed to be afternoon as the road racers taking part would've had a heart attack if asked to get out of bed early .

[Andrew G]

I've done a couple of TTs where part of the field has overlapped with a tri using part of the TT course at the same time.

Lucky bugger Marco, I haven't had that joy there yet, but I am down there for a 50 on Sunday so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I've seen a couple of things in various places about tris in town centres that haven't ghone down well. The theory being that it would be good to have a sports event happening where people were shopping so would interest them and the athletes get supported. The reality had been differing levels of chaos due to traffic congestion and the shoppers not being keen on people running about them when they were shopping. May just have been badly organised ones.

[neilb]

Hi all

Tri bike legs come in all shapes and sizes ('scuse the pun) because the combination of elements needed to make the triathlon are are more difficult to overcome than the decision of the bike route itself. The location of the swim, transition and the run route (which need to be very near each other) are the deciding factors, the bike leg usually takes you away from those so usually has to be worked in to suit.

Some bike legs are on closed roads (eg: London Triathlon; all the Dorney Lake tris) and as everyone has said, the rest tend to be reasonably early, but not quite as early as TTs - we have to do a swim first and a run afterwards.

The races are usually on Sundays too.

In my experience, very few Triathlons put the bike legs purely on A roads on out and back courses unless they have coned off part of the road (eg London Tri). The main reason is that the swim will be a mass start, either for the total race or in waves, and by the time people get to the bike there's unlikely to be a minute or anything like it between riders and a lot of cyclists out on the course. So to avoid making the car drivers or police annoyed, as well as for safety reasons, most races tend to be on quieter roads as far as practicable.

Sometimes they are laps, sometimes one big loop. And they can be hilly or flat of course. Not many out and backs in my experience. And they are very unlikely to be very accurately measured. Sometimes the organiser will say it's a 38K bike or a 43k bike, more usually you just find out it's longer or shorter than 40K. Which can make you feel elated / deflated if you look at your watch when racing!

Also the organisers have to be able to police the route with marshalls and draft busters usually on motor bikes to stop the drafting /pack riding that some can indulge in (2 mins penalty first time you're caught drafting in the race or DQ if you're caught repeatedly doing it).

I'm sure there are other factors too. But too detailed to worry about.

Cheers

Neil