SL 4-up TTT

[Jonathan]

The Surrey League 4-up Team Time Trial, always a bit of a highlight as it is the only 4-up around so you never know what to expect.

In the team this year was Oliver (current club 10 record holder), Rob (beast of a triathlete), Ian (cat 2 racer) and myself (done some TTs this year). We were aiming to be on the podium this year having missed out by about 20 seconds last year, and I was just hoping I would be able to contribute something for the first lap before they speed off without me.

The course consists of a mixture of the Alfold/Kirdford courses and starts off technical with climbs and bends before it settles into a flatter faster section with a couple of climbs thrown in at the end just to make it interesting. 2 laps of a 15 mile course and the time was taken off the third rider.

With the teams setting off every three minutes we ended up with 6 minutes of clean air ahead off us as Norwood Paragon were DNS.

We set off hard and managed to split up on the first bend, we managed to get it back together but the first half lap was tough, a big mixture of high speed and then waiting for whoever hadn't managed to take the corner quite as fast as everyone else.

Rob's tri background was catching up with him and he was having to do a lot of work to get back on after some of the tighter corners, we got to the flatter section and the 4 of us started putting in some serious turns. A couple of hairy moments when cars decided to pull out in front of us but we got through.

Some skills between me and Ian as we had to pass a water bottle between us while on unstable TT bikes and then we were back into the technical bits. Rob blew up with about half a lap to go so we continued with just the three (which wasn't part of my plan) of into the quite tough head wind, we kept it together for the final few miles even though we were all starting to suffer.

We finished strongly as a three in a time of 1:18:19 and 6th position on the day. Sigma sport destroyed the field with a time of 1:12 with 2-6 all grouped together with just a couple of minutes separating them.

[Toks]

Well done guys - 4up TT's are no joke!!