The Reliability Trial

AKA the unofficial world championship for club riders.

- Giles Belbin

There are few traditions as firmly rooted in the culture of the club cyclist as the club reliability trial. What is a reliability trial? Easy. You gather with your fellow club members, and members of any other local clubs. Over an agreed route of a known distance between roughly 25 and 75 miles, you choose a time within which you think you can complete the course, then go out and prove it, the idea being to finish more or less at the agreed time. Do that and you get a certificate, a piece of cake and a cup of tea.