Time Trial Questions

No, to move up you have to do qualifying mass start races (road or crit). TT's require strength to win, but not bike handling skills. The thought is that no one wants a really strong guy with no pack experience ending up in a field of high level riders.

So is the cat 1,2,3,4, and 5 for time trialist? or no kind of rankings?

Also I was told its not good to train on a time trial bike. Is this true? Does anyone here have both a time trial bike and road bike for both races, and or triathlons?

Nope time trials are considered road races, so to move up you have to move up through the road race rankings. You might be able to find non-usacycling races that are catagorized by age.
If you only plan on doing TT's I can't see many reasons to not train on the TT bike. Actually it's vital to train on the TT bike if you really want to be good at it. For road racers its recommened that at least one or two days a week are put on the TT bike. The only reason you would need a separate road bike is for group rides. TT bikes/aerobars are a big no-no in groups. They are just too twitchy to ride near other people with. If you have a road bike with aero's you can use the bike in groups as long as you stay off the aeros.

dmstone1 said:

So is the cat 1,2,3,4, and 5 for time trialist? or no kind of rankings?

Also I was told its not good to train on a time trial bike. Is this true? Does anyone here have both a time trial bike and road bike for both races, and or triathlons?

I guess I should not even post this, I am an old fart, 53. I started doing TT's a few months ago. I can't yet compete with the top guys, but I have been able to drop 4 minutes from my first TT a couple of months ago. The hot shots are pulling 24 minute times in our group, I am just breaking 30 minutes.

I have been riding my Tri bike two days a week and my road bike 4 days a week. Personally, I really like the TT bike for riding alone.

So as I said, these words are not worth much at all, but I like to type. ;-)