Having not received a start sheet I spent some time checking out the start and finish by car and ended up with relatively short warm up. Luckily, the start is a quick downhill section of single carriageway followed by an undulating mile or so before joining the dual carriageway giving a reasonable warm up anyway. A gentle incline then takes you to the start of THE HILL - this is the monumental gift downhill section that makes this course so fast. We're talking about something like 2 miles of 11 sprocket even into the wind where I reached a max speed of 43.6 mph - and you only go up the first few hundred yards of this on the way back to the finish. Despite all this I still felt rough on the way out which I guess was a combination of adrenaline and effort. I was beginning to feel better just before the turn (well over half way to this point) only to be caught for 4 minutes by Andy Topham, so I'm thinking (optimistically) if he does a 50 then I should get a 57 - not too bad. I felt much better coming back with a slightly helpful wind and managed to finish strongly. It turned out that Topham did a 48!! for second place and my time was a PB 55:23
, a PB by a whopping 1:23. The result board was one of those amazing 'I wish I'd been there' sort of things except this time I was there. Hutch won with 46:41 and you could have done a 49 and not been in the top ten! Julia Shaw set a new women's record with a staggering 50:01 with Houvenaghel close behind in 50:16 (I think). The best junior did something like 50:50.
I might ride this course again.