Currently there is no genuine support for Team Time Trial events. TTT racing. A manually applied delay is used. It would be good for this exciting format of racing to have genuine support.
Team gates. Each team should have its own lane and should be able to peddle until their start time. At which point, their team clock should start running. This means all team riders see the SAME team clock. This is important as TTT teams use the seconds to time the change over.
Team results panel. It would be good to have something like the sprint widget. It should show current teams split times and finish time. Ordered by fastest first. This would enable a team on the road and DC in the team car to see how the team is doing relative to the other teams in the race.
It should be possible to set a team name and group the riders as a team. Else the above would not work anyway.
I think this is a reasonable request given the amount of free pubicity and streaming hours your getting off the back of the WTRL TTT events.
When racing in a Team Time Trial (e.g. WTRL events), each team is given a delay time, and itās up to the teams to ensure that they start the appropriate number of minutes after the event timer reaches zero. During the delay, the riders either need to stop pedalling or go into the pairing screen to avoid crossing the start line too soon. Depending on the responsiveness of each riderās turbo trainer, some riders get out of the pen much quicker than other members of their own team.
In some Individual Time Trials, there is a conveyor belt which launches riders from the start pen periodically, ensuring everyone starts at the same pace and at precise time intervals.
It would be awesome if this conveyor belt launcher could be implemented for TTTs. Each team would take up a row on the belt, so all riders from one team would be side by side. The belt would then launch each team after the appropriate delay time (i.e. one team every minute).
Benefits:
all riders from a team cross the start line at exactly the same time, regardless of their turboās responsiveness
all riders launch at the same speed, allowing every team to group up and get into team formation quickly with no surges or sprints needed
riders could continue to pedal after the event timer hits zero, without the need to go into the pairing screen
no stress of having to time our own delays
no-one would accidentally cross the start line too soon
During the TTT the group is held to a ādelayed startā. While this is very much understandable as the groups needs to set off at 30 second intervals. It would be great to see a countdown in the holding pen for the whole team, and it would be even better to allow them to stay warmed up.
Another thought is to have a roller belt that starts the TTT in a group, like is configured for an individual time trial.
Example: During the most recent TTT our team had a 12 minute start delay. We were static for those 12 minutes, letting our muscled get cold. We also canāt see when to start, we rely our leader to communicate on a 3rd party app.
Liz_J
(Liz Jones U15šŗš¦ā¤ļø (GMBR) #Fight4šŗš¦)
5
Agree, the start delay for TTT could use improvement. The āmanualā countdown for each team is less than optimal.
Today in ZRL, I was in the team car for my team so I did the timekeeping and while it was okay for us, there was a rider on another team who slowly rolled through the start by accident. Iām sure they incurred a penalty for that.
On warmup: There is a clunky work around to keep warm while waiting, which is to go into the pairing screen and spin your legs there ā your avatar wonāt move while youāre there. You nip back out a few seconds before go time (after youāve stopped pedaling). I would advise practicing this before trying it out in a race. Itās certainly not ideal and should be improved.
Also, two of my team mates dropped Bluetooth connectivity while waiting. Ans one was kicked out because thereās a loose 30 second start time where you need to be back in the pen. She got kicked out. So we were down two teammates today
Yikes, thatās incredibly bad experience. Sorry you all went through that.
Liz_J
(Liz Jones U15šŗš¦ā¤ļø (GMBR) #Fight4šŗš¦)
11
Oh I have an idea- what if u just got off the bike and did a little jogging thing? You donāt go anywhere and you can just jump on whenever you need to
Yeah, pairing screen is the standard solution for warming up after banner drop, just make sure you know how to get out of it quickly when it is time to start for real (I hear this is an issue especially on Apple TV).
I noticed only now that RGT has TTTs as well: VCNTT Season 7 - RGTDb TLDR: Every team sets up and enters their own race at their chosen time on a specific course that changes on a weekly basis, and the results from all the individual races are collated to make up the actual team results for each week. This eliminates both the start delay nonsense and the trouble with faster/slower teams interfering with the teamās pack dynamics.
With the club functionality and the ability to set up club-only races on Zwift as well, in principle thereās nothing preventing the use of this format, for the lack of better options. Any takers?