Both of us finished our season proper a little while ago so had to dust off the pointy bikes and fast wheels for today, we met at the HQ and rode down to the start in the cold. My car said 4 degrees at HQ so arm and leg warmers for me and I was glad of them.
The first 5 miles out to the club 10 turn had a great tail wind so we were scooting along nicely with Paul where I anticipated he'd be for the ride, glued a fag paper's width from my rear tyre
. Left and on to the kick climb and long drag to Rusper. the kick up went well enough but boy is that drag long, certainly longer than I remembered and I was going down the gears to try and keep the speed up. Paul was still stuck to my wheel like glue, I'd been praying for him to shout "easy" at one point on the drag so I could ease and save a bit for the fast bit next but he didn't he just rode in to the red a bit instead to hang on.Fast bit next and we were going at a fair rate down here, I just couldn't ease up a fraction as with the shadows on the road I didn't have to glance back to check on Paul, it looked like we were on a tandem. Drags and rolls all the way making tough going and frequent gear changes to stay on top of it. I was really pushing myself to tow Paul along and it's one of the hardest races I've done. Left at Newdigate and down the hill and then more drags before the final left hander in to Inholms Lane. this is a long drag to the finish and I was breathing out of everywhere by now but just buried myself for the 200m board at which point PVT could come out my wheel and sprint for the line. We got to the board and I shouted "GO!", nothing, oh bugger he's knackered too and I'm going to have to keep going to the line. We crossed the line and both collapsed over our tri-bars rolling along the road panting and coughing, it was an attractive sight.
Back to HQ and 40.21 on the clock. A shame to just miss 40 mins but we went as hard as we could on the day, a bit warmer and less windy and we'd have been comfortably inside it. Oh well a target for next year if we don't both think better of it before then.
Unfortunately we were the only ACC team to make the start line. Jon and Terry were at the HQ but when he went to get changed Terry realised he'd left his kit at home
. We all do something silly like that at some point, I once saw "DNS - Forgot Bike" written on a results board. Don't know who won on scratch as we both left before everyone was in, I'd be surprised if Woodburn and his pacer havn't got the Vets on Standard prize though.I longish kip after lunch and now a good recovery drink of Dark Star Espresso, a surprising tasty very dark coffee beer. It's very morish, you could get through quite a lot very easily.
DNS tastic!
