Southern Counties Cycling Union 25mile TT

[Jon H]

The Addiscombe time trial posse was out in force this morning on the Horsham bypass, riding the SCCU 25 on the G25/53 course.

A reasonable morning; not much wind, could have been a bit warmer and it rained a bit for the later riders, but could have been a lot worse.

I had four goals this morning;
1. Get under the hour.
2. Do a course PB.
3. Beat all the other ACC riders.
4. Not get caught by Norwood Paragon's Rob Douglas who was 4 minutes behind me.

Out of those I achieved 2 & 4, and was paying with sore legs for having ridden a 10 on Saturday afternoon.

So, onto the nitty gritty:

Richard Viney 59:11
Robert Royle-Evatt 1:00:03
Jon Hemming 1:00:51
Andrew Carter 1:01:13
Steve Hehir (2nd Claim) 1:02:59
Mark McLaughlin 1:03:30
Terry Hill 1:06:40
Matt Day 1:08:53
Ajay Khandelwal 1:14:11

[Ian A4size]

Looks like soops was paying for the faster ride yesterday, but i guess he never had aero bars and incurred a time penalty for being late

[ajay khandelwal]

Thanks for the PR job Ian !

Thanks to John our very own TT guru who inspired me during his talk at the club house earlier in the year.

My goals for the race were

1. Persuade Ninder that getting up at 5 am was a fun way to spend Sunday morning
2. Get around my first 25 with out getting lost
3. Complete the course in under 1.15 (evens)
4. Make sure no nonagenarians on trikes came past me

I achieved 1 (maybe not!),3 and 4 !

I had an inauspicious start when I couldn't see any marshals on the first roundabout and all I could see were riders coming back in the other directions. I panicked and turned around and starting riding back. Hang on a minute, hadn't I made this mistake in 2003, during my first ever 10 when I managed to turn back on the first roundabout and set a new club record (even though it was for 5 miles!)
Learning from my past mistakes I stopped ran across the dual carriage way, and followed the rider who had set off behind me ( No. .

So I'd lost a couple of minutes but now I was back in track. The moral of the story in when in doubt go straight ! Just when I thought things were settling into a rythm I had Richard Viney tearing past me transformed into a possessed hulk screaming 'Pull your finger out Ajay ! So that's how you do it (Before the start he had been his normal modest self stating his goal was 'just to get around really! As if !) Another thing learnt, its not whether you can talk the talk, but if you can ride the ride. I have a new respect for these TT riders - they go fast !

I realised how slow I really was when I watched the marathon later in the day - 2.02 for 26 miles. It took me 1.14 to do 25 on a bike - and I was riding at 50 km p/h at certain sections ! I need to get faster. If you gave those runners a pair of aero bars and made their trainers out of carbon, my times would look in danger of being beaten a biped !

A great day out! Thanks to ACC marshalls and supporters including Tamar, Maria and Eddie Munday (who popped out like Paparazzi along the dual carriage way to take his snaps)

[Toks]

Wow exciting stuff boys! Mr Varney, you da mAN!!! Soops, riding hard two days consecutively??? whats going on? You'll be racing twice a week soon - be carefull! ha ha, well done bro, your forms building up nicely. Just don't go and spoil it buy slacking off for three weeks

[Jon H]

I've just seen the official result sheet - well done to Mark on picking up the prize for "1st novice".

Obviously the SCCU hadn't cottoned on that Mark is no novice but is making his comeback to glory (previous PB's dating back to around 1979).