A freezing morning with Rob RE and myself riding. I had my time trial bike out this weekend to get a comparison with last year's time.
It took a bit of time to get going and with my legs a bit sore from Saturday's efforts I didn't seem to be able to get myself up to full race pace with my heartrate hovering about 5-10bpm below where I'd expect it to be.
I seemed to be covering the ground well though and the pace picked up along the familiar section of the Holmwood 10 course. Managed to catch Rob shortly after the Capel roundabout and somehow riders managed to line up to be chased just as my attention started wandering throughout the course.
After 20 miles at race pace Hurst Hill is a real challenge. I almost always get caught by one of the seeded riders at this stage and this year was no exception with James Dear catching me for 5 minutes in the run up to the hill. The impressive thing about good riders is the way they don't seem to slow down at all as the road goes up and James Dear disappeared into the distance as I dropped down to my lowest gear and struggled up Hurst Hill with the thought of "why don't you just get off and sit down" nagging inside my head. As I got to the top I was relieved that I'd fitted a 39-tooth ring the night before, if i'd left the 42-tooth on I'd still be lying by the side of the road now
The good thing about getting to the top of Hurst Hill is that everything seems pretty flat after that, the bad thing is that once you get past Rusper the mile markers start to countdown and your time starts to run out. I'd set myself a target time of 1.20.00 and as I reached the 5 mile to go marker my watch was reading 1.08.?? A lot of effort was required if I was going to get inside 1.20! The section from Rusper to Newdigate is excellent. Slightly downhill most of the way you can really get a big gear going and the bike moving and start to make up time but your speed is then really killed by the couple of bumps through Newdigate to Parkgate.
As I turned left towards Leigh with 2 miles left I had about 4.5 minutes left to get inside 1.20. No point looking at the watch after that just pushing legs which were starting to get very upset about racing twice in a weekend.
At the finish I glanced at my watch to see 1.20.??. A bit disappointed but still a pb for the course. As the oxygen started to kick into my brain rather than my legs I remembered that I always start my watch a minute early and I'd therefore done a 1.19, well chuffed
Final time was 1.19.39. Rob RE did a 1.28 on his first outing of the year. The event was won by veteran Ray Hughes with a 1.10.??, a phenomenal ride.
