2024 A VINTAGE YEAR FOR RECORDS

This year saw TT records tumbling across multiple distances and categories. Vern Pitt speaks to the record-breakers about how they made their mark

- Vern Pitt

100 MILES

John Archibald 3:12.58

It was around 75 miles into his first ever 100-mile time trial that John Archibald began to have regrets. "I just got a real shock. What had felt very easy after 25 miles felt absolutely horrendous by 75 miles. It wasn't the case of the lights going out, it was like a dimmer switch where every 10 miles it got worse and worse." At only two-thirds distance, he was suffering. "Just under two hours in, with still over an hour to go, I was already thinking, 'This really needs to end soon. I can't do this"," he says. "I really wasn't enjoying myself at all," he adds, with typical Archibald understatement. "I was contemplating my choices."

Archibald, now seven-time national champion, was no stranger to toplevel time trialling when he set off just outside Keswick, Cumbria for the 100mile time trial national championship on 14 July. Nor was he a stranger to long days in the saddle, having spent three years as a road racing pro, including a stint with ProTeam outfit Eolo-Kometa (now Polti-Kometa), riding races including the Tour de Yorkshire and Tirreno-Adriatico. But he'd not dared venture into longer timed tests on British roads until June this year.

A new challenge

By his own admission, Archibald was "winging it" attempting the '100', so there was a modicum of surprise when he not only won it, but broke Marcin Bialoblocki's record for the distance, which had stood since 2019. "I was preparing for the 10, 25 and probably the 50-mile TTs, and I knew the training I was doing supported that," says the 34-year-old Scot, who works in digital marketing. He stuck to the same weekly regime, which amounted to around 15 hours on the bike, largely on his commute to his day job.

None of this is to suggest he was taking the record attempt lightly.