Time Trials

Time trails are conducted on public roads throughout the year in locations in the Perth metropolitan area with circuits of varying levels of challenge, with races mostly occurring in the spring, summer & autumn. The more challenging courses are in the hills & surrounding areas east of the city & are organised by a very dedicated small group of members of a WA based organisation - the Australian Time Trial Association (ATTA).

Click here to go to the ATTA WA website.

An excellent feature is that you can pre-register for races, check results of recent races & also access an archive of results from previous seasons.

The rewards of time trials are well described on the ATTA website as being "matching one's current fitness and abilities on a bike against the external milieu of road, distance, weather and the clock. That is, it involves getting on your bike and going like the clappers until you've covered the predetermined distance. The rules are simple but the most important phrase in our vocabulary is 'alone and unassisted'. That is, with one or two exceptions, we ride always as individuals; we start at one minute, sometimes 30sec intervals and take no deliberate assistance from other riders or other traffic.

The courses vary: some are flat and potentially fast, others are undulating and some bloody hilly. Not all courses are standard distances eg 16, 40, 50, 80 & 160km but they are usually close to one of them because, pointless as it may be, we do like to compare times across courses and often continents. Anyway, we also convert all our times to speeds which allows us to consider a season's performances together."

My Results

Whilst the times (as hours, minutes & seconds) are not spectacular sometimes there is marginal improvement as a season has progressed!

Early Birds in the Park

Kings Park: 17.0 kms (5 laps)

Kings Park: 17.7 kms (3 laps)

Kings Park: 15.2 kms (4 laps)

Winter in the Parks (2 courses)

Annual & Special Events

Cyclists and the law in Western Australia

Click here to go the Department of Transport's Cycling & the law web page which sets out a useful summary of key provisions of the law in WA as applicable to bikes.

Bike seats

Thanks to research which has highlighted a particular risk from regular bike riding, improved designs of bike seats are now readily available. The problem occurs due to compression of the arterial circulatory network in region of the perineum, as well as nerve damage, posed by using conventional bike seats. For instance, there are reports of increased numbness for both male & female riders, with credible evidence of impotence in some males. An excellent article was published in a special issue in 1999 of Scientific American (Men: the scientific truth about their work, play, health and passions) which unfortunately is not readily available.

Click here to view or download a PDF (100k) excerpt of the article Spokes man for a hard problem.