This is one of the few chances the fast men get to put a time down before the Nationals so the start sheet showed me as very much one of the runt of the litter. In fact there were 8 guys down who'd done a 19minute ride (one of them a minute behind me) and 19 with 20minute rides to their name
Unfortunately no calm day for me as it was an early afternoon race and the wind picked up
but the temperature was fine for this time of year. The wind was straight up and down the course with a tail wind out and a head wind return.I set off with my legs feeling good and just got my head down and spun the legs, pedaling big gears easily with the wind assistance. I was caught at about 4 miles by my minute man and used him as a target for as long as possible until he vanished from sight, my minute man had been a DNS.
Round the turn, which is an odd dumbell shaped double roundabout affair and then bang straight in to the block head wind. I really buried myself in to the wind although the difference in speed between this and the out leg was amazing. I was flying along at 29 and 30mph on the way out but really driving and making my little pins ache to hold 22/23mph on the way back.
Well they say every second counts, in fact Jon did last week when they were pipped by 2 of them for a team award. Well I grabbed them back today to clock a new PB of 22:59
. Suffice to say I'm rather pleased to go sub 23 in my first non-Sporting race of the year.Another week and another tie for first for Ben (Instone) as both he and Chris Ball did 20:08. Fastest ride of the day was the very fast VC St Raphael tandem which did 19:43. I think Carol Gandy on the womens with 24:09.
P.S. For those that like to keep abreast of these things my recovery drink when I got home today was the superb Thwaites Lancaster Bomber.
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Just get out there and do it 
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