Gravesend CC 25 - 15/7

[Andrew G]

Back at the Q25/8 for the first time in a couple of years. A nice single carriageway course but a tough one, it's used as a SPOCO counting course. Actually it was harder than I remembered it!

A downhill start and then some rough surface to the first turn at about 6 miles, went well on this stretch and once round the turn it was obvious why, headwind back to the next turn. Tried to keep the average up and managed quite well catching my minute man.

A left and on to the long out and back leg (about 15 miles). This is all drags of varying steepness and length but it felt like doing the Hop Oast and Tollgate drags repeatedly. Suffered in a couple of places and couldn't keep the average up as the drags sapped any strength from my legs. The 4 bottles of beer I had yesterday afternoon at my brother's 40th do probably didn't help .

A final left and a short slightly draggy run to the finish.

1:03:26 - not too bad on this course bearing in mind my fitness this year but well off my course PB. Fitness, or lack of it, shows on the drags on this course.

[Ian A4size]

Well done , at least it never rained!
We are just back in from a 70k er, it was like paris-roubaix out there.

Chapeau for racing tho, me- I CBA at the mo and am just enjoying riding.

Every day rain and wind, when I get home means lots of eurosport TDF

[Andrew G]

Cheers Mr.M. I enjoy racing and seeing people at them but have been a bit below par this year as I need miles and races to build form, with the weather we've had both are well down on what I'd like.

I'll just keep plugging away and see what happens, best races have been a 50 and a 100 as they don't need the outright speed so much. Have been trying a few different things too. Tried some new (to me) bars today which I thought would work well for me but they didn't and I had wrist ache from about half distance. Second "new" set I've tried this year without joy, should probably just stick with my old Ovals but they're not perfect so I keep trying to find my perfect bars and then I can just glue everything in place .

[carl f]

Well done Andrew thats a decent time considering the lack of fitness and part of a spoco course. Seems alot of people are suffering from lack of fitness this season must be the horrendous conditions we've had. It was nice to have a dry race yesterday anyway