The Secrets Of Britain's Fastest Time Triallists

It’s a tough and lonely row to hoe, but the race of truth remains a signature of the British cycling calendar. And we keep getting quicker...

- Richard Abraham

Believe it or not, the sun was out in Hull on the Sunday of the August Bank Holiday weekend earlier this year. The air was warm and slippery. Winds were light. The traffic was flowing smoothly on the A63 and James Gullen arrived at the Hull Ionians rugby club car park and got changed. He had raced a sporting 10-mile TT the previous day and was training hard for the upcoming Tour of Britain; feeling the efforts of the previous weeks’ efforts, he casually rode up and down the back roads to warm up for the TeamSwift charity open 10.

The JLT-Condor rider set off and got to the turn of the notoriously quick V718 course in just eight minutes, but he didn’t feel that 35mph seemed particularly speedy. Being overtaken by cars and lorries doing in excess of 60mph, it probably wouldn’t. Nevertheless he stopped the clock at 16-59 to become the fastest man over 10 miles in the country this year and only the second member of the elusive sub-17 club. Marcin BiaÅ‚obÅ‚ocki, who clocked 16-35 on the same course last year, is the only man to have gone faster.

“It’s only when you catch another rider that you feel how fast you’re going. I caught my two-minute man and he still did a 19,” Gullen recalls. “It’s crazy when you think of it like that… he does a PB and a 19 and gets caught for two minutes!

“It was always talked about whether sub-17 was even possible, let alone whether I could do it. So it is nice to join the club… it’s just a shame I couldn’t join it first and get in the record books.”