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Marcel Schubert (Zurbaran Racing) l Schubert is a relative newcomer to time trialling with the 44-year-old from Darlington having only ridden his first event in 2017. We caught up with the man in grey and pink to find out more about his journey into cycling and his love for time trials.
What got you into time trialling?
I didn’t have a long road cycling background prior to starting to compete. I bought my first road bike through the cycle scheme in 2011 mainly for commuting. From then I progressed to sportive challenges and slowly build up. At some point I discovered Strava segments, which made things even more fun.
I wasn’t a member of any club so was always out by myself doing my own pace, and I still prefer solo rides today. I started to wonder if time trials would suit me as my endurance had improved quite a bit. During one summer evening commute I bumped into a local club 10, asked the marshal about the dates and turned up the following week.
What do you like about time trialling?
Time trialling is a fantastic sport. I always enjoyed pushing myself hard in whatever sports I have done before cycling e.g. football, boxing or weight training at the gym. I am also a bit of a perfectionist.
To excel in any sport requires you strive for perfection but I think time trialling is one where you can really measure your progress well given all the tools we have at hand these days. For example the planning and execution of a pacing strategy for a particular course is so important. That’s the performance aspect I enjoy.
The other side is the friendliness of the time trialling community at all the events and the fact that there is a nearby time trial almost every weekend and even midweek. It’s quite special in my opinion.
What is the furthest you’ve travelled to compete in a time trial?
I think that would have been the 2020 National 10 held by Newbury Velo, which was also my first ever National. It was a 260ish mile drive each way. The men started in the afternoon, therefore I could drive down in the morning and arrive in good time. I finished 38th with a time of 20:00, that also was a 10-mile personal best for me at the time. It was a fantastic experience to be part of a huge field of riders.
That really got me into competing beyond the local events. The other one was Raglan in South Wales, also 260 miles away, for the National 12 in 2022. This required an overnight stay though. Unfortunately our rooms were right on top of a bar in Monmouth and we barely had any sleep!
Tell us something about your favourite courses.
All my favourites are sporting courses, especially the hilly ones and we have a few great ones in Teesside - the Blakey Ridge 25 at Castleton, the Dave Clark Memorial Spoco at Richmond, and the Andy Oliver Memorial Spoco near Scorton in North Yorkshire.
Outside Teesside I really like the Greystoke circuit in the Lake District. These course all need really good pacing strategies.
Tell us something about your least favourite courses.
I can’t think of any particular least favourites or any I dislike but I suppose the increasing amount of traffic is making TTs ever more difficult. Road surface quality is also a major problem in many places.
How many miles do you ride in an average week?
Good question because I am not really that bothered about distance. I also do a lot of indoor workouts, as I like to keep things structured.
My mileage will be higher in the summer, and right now it is quite low as I needed some recovery from the long 2025 season. I actually work in metric units, so my head is always busy dividing my speed and distances by 1.6 on race day!
My current 2025 status is 17,500km (~11000 miles)/ 615hours vs 14500km (9000 miles)/ 530 hours at this point in the last two years and almost exactly on par with 2022.
The average distance per week is about 360km (225miles), but that doesn’t reflect the periodisation throughout the year and it includes virtual distance, hence less meaningful for me.