Competitive Cycling for Life ^
You can claim a Standard Award for each of the standard distances from 10 to 100 miles, and for the standard times of 12 and 24 hours.
If you're hoping to achieve a new Standard you need to pay the one-off annual fee in advance. This will cover you for all distances (or times) that season. You can do this through your profile page, or contact your group recorder.
To be able to claim you need to beat your previous best Age Adjusted Time (or Age Adjusted Distance for a 12 or 24). If it’s your first year of racing you’ll be able to claim for your best events in the year. If you haven’t claimed a particular award for 3 years you can treat the current year as your first, if you want to. Every year your Age Adjustment will increase meaning that beating your previous Age Adjusted PB remains achievable.
As long as you’ve linked your CTT and VTTA profiles any improvement on your baseline targets will automatically show in your online membership record under 'My Profile' and 'My Standards'. The columns in the My Standards screen have the following meanings:
Event = Standard Distance/Time of event
Date = Date of Result
Result = Time or Distance achieved
Plus = Plus of Result on Standard
AAT/D = Age Adjusted Time or Distance of Result
Target Time/Distance = Result to achieve in this event to improve your baseline and win a standards medal
During the season you can claim for an improvement, but it's best to wait until the end of the season to make your claim when you can see all your improvements for the season. You may want to claim your best improvement at a distance but you can choose any one if you have more than one improvement. When you claim an improvement it updates your baseline and target time. After 1st October each year you can order a medal for the improvements you have claimed and which are now showing in your updated baseline. If you claim a medal your Group will present it, or a plaque if you have achieved multiple medals, at their annual awards event.
You can find more detail about claiming Standards in the VTTA Regulations, here.
Note about the origin of Standards:
Standards were first devised by EH Strevens in 1943. They were revised in 2012, and again in 2019. By 2021 we had accrued a database of times from over 130,000 rides, so the tables were updated using this more recent information. This occurred again in 2024.
The way in which the Age Adjustments increase is based on a statistical analysis of the actual age decline in performances from historic CTT results. We generate the tables for each classification and type of machine using a formula which depends upon age, distance and several coefficients derived from the analysis.