Croydon & District CA 21mile TT

[Jon H]

Five Addiscombe riders took to the start line in this mornings CDCA hilly 21 mile time trial covering two laps around the Bletchinley-Outwood circuit. A fairly brisk easterly wind helped push us up the hill on the main road through Bletchingley, but also led to some intersesting side-wind moments on the fast descents.

Anyway, congratulations to Jon & Graham on losing their time trial virginity.

So, onto the results:

Me 59:12
Robert Royle-Evatt 1:05:30
Graham Oliver 1:05:40
Jon Avery 1:09:09
Ajay Khandelwal 1:12:52

[richv]

I thought you were going to ride the tandem Ajay?

[Toks]

Go easy on him Rich! I wasn't even sure if he had a competitive bone left in his body. Well done Soups!!

[Tamar Collis]

Nice one Jon - you've had a brilliant start to the season. Rich...I think there's gonna be some hot competition for the men's tt trophies this year.

Well done to the tt virgins too - fine results.

[richv]

There was some pretty hot competition last year as well.

Anyway having been well and truly trounced by Jon already this year, Rob yet to get his quick bike out, rumours that Andrew Carter may get some tri-bars, Steve Kemsley on some secret training plan, and Toks threatening to ride some TTs I'm looking forward to the start of the Track season

[huw williams]

That's it - Oliver, Avery and Khandelwal lost to The Other Side with the possibility of Adesanya to follow? This is Dark, DARK news.

Actually since switching to fixed for training for the past couple of weeks I've entered a couple of fixed category TTs - I'm not telling anyone which ones though because I'll be rubbish.

Does anyone else in the club ride fixed TTs?

[Tamar Collis]

Didn't Sylv do the President's on a fixed one time?

[Maria David]

Great work at the tt guys - looks like there's gonna be some interesting competition this year.

[richv]

[quote="huw williams"]That's it - Oliver, Avery and Khandelwal lost to The Other Side with the possibility of Adesanya to follow? This is Dark, DARK news.

Actually since switching to fixed for training for the past couple of weeks I've entered a couple of fixed category TTs - I'm not telling anyone which ones though because I'll be rubbish.

Does anyone else in the club ride fixed TTs?

[huw williams]

B*****ks, rumbled already!

[ajay khandelwal]

Yes Richard, I was going to do it on the Tandem, but that's when I thought that sporting meant 'fair sport' or 'sporting chance'; when I realised that sporting actually meant uphill my stoker went on strike! I really didn't feel like doing this solo! The race of truth ! That's why I wanted to obscure my slow time; by doing it tandem I thought I could laugh it off as fun. But I had Keith Butler's words ringing in my ears, from his talk at the club house earlier in the year, 'ride a TT on your road bike, it will help you ride hard in races'. In my attempts to ditch the 'wheelsucker' adjective that is glued to my name, I have realised I have to take some wisdom from the lords of the TT. I mean give me some of that internal discipline and focus. 3 hours training on the turbo and then riding on your own on a bleak A road with no one to talk to except your rear disc wheel. That is committment. I realised that without some of that committment, I would always be riding sub standard, sheltered in the peloton. The gist of the Keith Butler talk was that riding TT could help you become the patron of the race, giving you the strength to bridge a gap, or to even ride away on your own for a long time.

Anyhow whilst I was committed on an intellectual level I did try and do everything to get out of it. I decided to drive the scenic way - until Ninder accused me of 'obfuscating'. I didn't know what she was talking about but once she grabbed the steering wheel I found that we were on the motorway, the M25 to be precise and heading for Bletchingly HQ.

It wasn't so bad after all. I rode the first lap in 39 minutes looking out for hills 1,2 and 3 as Richard had mentioned in his posts. Well they kinda warmed me up. The second time around I had the cheers of Ninder, Linda Good, Joyce Smith and Chris and John Watts to cheer me on. Well nothing that a road racer likes more than some crowd appreciation. Now we're talking. And the thing about these sporting courses is that they've got some really fast sweeping downhill sections and thats what I like ! Hardly anyone overtook me on the second lap; but when they did it was fast like they had a motor on board! Nice scenic views of a windmill and I was pushing a bit harder on the final hills. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating when I saw a road sign on the right hand side warning me that toads would be crossing. But there it was. Second lap was around 34 minutes. At that rate I worked out that I was getting five minutes faster each time around, so nicely warmed up, if had carried on for another 2 laps, we'd be talking about 29 minutes and 24 which would give me a storming 53 minutes.

Great ride from John Hemming who is in very slick form this year, his first time under 1 hour on this route, and credit to Jon, Rob and Graham for consigning me to last place ! Looks like its warming upto be an extra competitive year for the ACC on race and TT fronts....

[ajay khandelwal]

What's the next TT that's on the cards ?

[Jon H]

Good write up Ajay.

Next up for Richard, Rob & Me is a double dose of sporting course fun next weekend; Southern Counties 10 on Saturday afternoon followed by a 25 on Sunday morning. We have Terry Hill for company on Sat, and Matt Day, Ben Jones & Andrew Carter with us on Sunday.

Richard has put a list of upcoming TT's in the General area of the forum. The one everyone should have a go at is the SCCU 25 on 23 April.

[Toks]

Hi Rich and Jon is there anyway you could give us non TT zealots some idea of what a good time is on these sporting courses. For a 10s,25s,50s and 100s I've got some idea of a what a good time/ride is. However with these sporting courses I'm kinda unsure. Ajay's time sounds pretty good to me how does that compare to the average or winners time?

...basically you all know my heart is in road racing but I'm trying to get more excited about TT's but its difficult without a bench mark. In a copy of CW a few weeks ago they put lap times for Richmond Park. Something like 25 was ok, 22 was good and 20 was best. Thats the kinda of thing I was thinking of. Thanks

[Jon H]

Well, in the CDCA event, the winning time was 51:45, which is a speed of 24.3mph. Mine was 21.3mph and I guess I finished about 1/4 of the way down the field. 20mph would put you about middle of the field in this type of event.