.Off to Ashford to the Q25/8 this morning for the last of my mid distance SPOCO races for the SPOCO SE series.
Metcheck had been saying that the forecast was a south westerly of 25mph so it could be fun today
. Putting my shoes on the car door blew shut and cracked me on the head, ouch. Okay so it is windy then.The course is a Y shape with one leg of the Y in particular being a bundle of drags with two or three kick up lumps to get over - not a real hilly SPOCO but my best guess/wild stab in the dark I'd say it's a minute to 1:30 slower than the Broadbridge course.
Nice hill to drop down at the start and out for 7 miles to the first turn. This was tough as the wind was really strong and a cross/head on to my left shoulder. Round the turn and a bit of respite as the wind was now helping as was the gradient being slightly downhill. Still got the odd sideways shove as the wind swirled a bit in between trees and caught the wheels. I was off number 8 and 10 caught me on this stretch.
A slight left and on towards the second turn. I did this course a few weeks ago and this leg is the toughest (normally) as the drags and lumps seem longer and steeper than when coming back the other way. Today though the wind was was now directly behind me
which helped roll over some of the drags a bit better than last time, but you never seem to get the same positive when the winds behind you as negative when it's in your face 
.Round the second turn and straight in to the teeth of the 25mph wind. Bloody hell this was hard going, absolutely no let up at all just a constant slap in the face
. The drags from this way now felt really hard.I lost my head a bit along here for a couple of minutes and drifted off with the fairies. I blame religion for this. I happened to notice out the corner of my eye that I was going passed a church with sheep mouching about in the grounds. I then drifted for a bit contemplating whether they had a problem with the numbers of their congregation and the vicar had decided to swell his/her flock literally, or if (s)he was just big on symbolism.
15 caught me now which dragged me back to my suffering so on I pressed as I only had about 5 miles left. These miles were fairly uneventful except that I managed to catch my 4 minute man about half a mile from the line. The only time I'd seen any other riders was at the turns, the field was really spread out today as people battled the wind with varying levels of success.
Back to HQ for a cuppa and a cake
.Having knocked 2.5 minutes off my 25 PB last week I was hoping for about a 1:05:30 on this course but the wind put paid to that. I ended up with a 1:07:07 so still 45 seconds faster than my last visit to this course which was in much better weather, so not too disappointed. The advantage of SPOCO events in these conditions is that the time doesn't matter. You score points based on your finishing position, and although everyone else gets the same weather and you'll probably finish in a similar placing you don't feel like it's a wasted weekend in rubbish weather.
When I left there were 30 results in and only 7 had gone under the hour at that point.
Only 2 more left for me in the series now, trouble is they're the long ones.
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