How much slower are Winter Time Trials?

To mark the first British Open time trial of the 2023 season, we were happy to help Cycling Time Trials, the British governing body for time trials, with a bit of data.

> Read the Cycling Time Trials article

> BS19 Ely & District myWindsock Forecast

What is the difference between Winter and Summer?

To find out the difference between Winter and Summer, we ran a simulation for every day of 2022. That’s 365 times around the Ely & District course! We ran the myWindsock simulations at 300 Watts, 80kg, 0.200 CdA. Here’s what we found.

Each orange dot is a simulated time based on weather conditions. Each day of 2022 represented.

You can see from the above graph the day to day the variability of times for the BS19 course due to the weather. Time range from 55 minutes in Winter Months to 53 minutes in the Summer.

Another thing to note is the seasonal day to day variability, that is the difference between two days of the same week or month. In the Winter we can see this is around 60 seconds, however times are a little more consistent in the Summer at around 30 seconds. Good job myWindsock give’s you the tools to measure the impact of the Weather.

> Find your Open and Club Time Weather and Analysis

We have more information about how weather impacts cycling speeds, here are some more articles.

Why do you ride slower in Winter: GCN Tech Show

Slow vs Fast Riders who suffers more in Winter Kit

Why do you ride faster when it’s warmer?

Why you are slow this Winter

Author: Ben Norbury

Ben Norbury is four times Manchester & District Middle Distance and Best All Rounder Time Trial Champion from 2016-2019. During this time he developed software to eliminate uncertainty of the weather conditions out of his pre-race preparation.