Racing started this weekend with a 41 miles road race near Milton Keynes, the Andy Morrison Memorial, run over a short 2.5 mile course that we were to cover 18 times. The course consisted of one long downhill with a tailwind... one long uphill drag with a headwind, and a straight to finish. Race started rapidly and I stayed tucked nicely into the peloton for the first half of the race, choosing not to contest any of the prime sprints. About halfway through the race a break of 2 got away from the bunch, and would go on to stay away for the victory. The bunch never got organised with the chase, so it came down to a sprint for 3rd place. Coming down the downhill section for the final time with 2 miles to go, I found myself at the front of the group, not a bad thing on a fast descent, but we then hit the drag with the headwind, bad position, bad time to be on the front. I had no choice but to drag the bunch along as I could see the break of 2 about 30 seconds up the road. With about 1.5 miles to go I realised I was not going to have enough energy to contest the sprint, so I went for a flyer off the front, got a small gap but that lasted all of about half a mile before the peloton wound it up. I ended up rolling in near the front of the main bunch, with team-mate Gunther Zechmann taking 6th place, and closet Zappi Mike Betts bagging a top 10 to boot. Not a bad race, and legs are starting to feel stronger with each road race!
Leading the bunch onto the downhill section.
Monday morning saw a return to the ridiculously early mornings, only known to the testers of this world, time trials will always fascinate me with their choice of starting at 7am... hey ho. This was a 10-mile open event on the H10/181 course in Witney, Oxfordshire. A blustery day meant that no fast times were expected on the day, however with the addition of my new 60mm deep front wheel, I was hoping to match my time of 22.01 from 3 weeks previous on the same course. I turned up to the start to find my minute man was a DNS, nobody to aim for.. great, it so happens that I caught my 2 minute man at the turn anyway! The conditions were windy on the way out, windy on the way back. Not ideal. I finished with a time of 22.10, which after seeing the times of others, I was not at all dissapointed with. Chris Ball won the event in 22.20, a good minute slower than the event 3 weeks prior to this one, so I definately went faster relative to that event!
Tuesday night I rode over to Sutton Courteney for a handicapped training ride, going off with a guy on his TT bike, I expected a working over, we pushed hard to get round and caught/dropped all those in front of us by the 1 mile to go mark. I easily did him in the sprint. A good training session!
Tonight I did the Didcot Phoenix club 10 on CC241, a potentially fast single carriageway course... but containing no less than 11 roundabouts! I took the win in this event by 7 seconds, recording a time of 22.20, very happy with that and pleased to take my first win of the season!
First 25 this weekend, looking forward to that and aiming to knock a good minute off by current pb of 58.21.
Until then.
Ciao.
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