A motely crew at the station today, all the usual suspects- minus the racers ( well most of them) and the secretive TTers.
Earlier correspondence with the shadow and a few others saw a larger than expected 18mph+ group, so we split it into two- approx 17/18 riders in each group.
We had decided to do an interval session with steve calling the shots, and we absolutely flew out of CSS thanks to an almighty tailwind.
I dont think anyone broke a sweat up and over the col du M23.
As we had a larger than normal group ( last time there was only 10) it was a little hard for the back markers to hear what was going on, and a few times people were having to hoof it to get back on.
I must admit tho that this time we did not do so much "recovery" and the rest period consisted of a 20mph thru and off- which was fairly ragged at best, not much calling"last man" and "over"- but it did get better over time.
At times the wind was a problem -especially on the ifield loop.
Up thru the lanes at rusper/partridge i really felt it, almost wanting to pack as i got stuck on the front and not being able to come thru
.
This caused a chuckle amongst my fellow riders for some reason.
Onto the lanes around lambs green and the wind did its worst, really slowing us up, sometimes we were down to 17mph, and that was a struggle.
The sprint was a strange affair, we had a coupla good sprinters, Toby and George- who both seemed to go off about 2 miles before ( trying and succeding to catch Bryan who went 3 miles before) the finishing post.
That left the rest of us playing catch up, i worked hard with Mike and Mark and another chap,but into the wind it was too hard and i sat up after frantically waggling my elbow for them to come thru.
Pretty tired after all my efforts on the home, but i did give it a few digs.
I was very pleased to watch the missus sit in on the way home and really give it some, i just sat at the back up the hill talking to George.
A good CR, just a little bit different with the interval stuff made it better than the norm.
Edited for the typos