Dursley Road Club 25 - 13 June

[SteveD]

As there was nothing on locally I decided to venture a bit further afield and ride the Dursley 25 on the U46B course for the first time. The course is out on the A419 Swindon to Gloucester road so it's a bit of a trek even for me living west of London. The course is a similar layout to the Bently course with two laps incorporating a 10 course. It's all smooth flat (ish) dual carriageway with the start and finish within spitting distance of each other so it's an honest course with no gift hills. The weather was warm and dry with a noticable breeze accross the course (but at least not a gale).

Well that's the good news on what turned out not to be my day. Given it was a new course for me I had allowed plenty of time to find the course and HQ which was just as well as it took some to find the HQ itself. This was a fair way from the start/finish so I decided to pick up my number and park nearer the start so Sue could watch the proceedings. Having assembled the bike I had ridden a couple of hundred meters into my warm up when my back wheel hit something very hard and the tyre was flat within seconds. Luckily it wasn't too far back to the car and I was able fit a new tube but by now time was getting a bit tight. Got to the start ok and started onto the course down the slip road picking up to 30mph. Once on the dual carriageway my speed settled down to 26/27 mph apart from the odd faster bit so things looked good. Got to the first turn in under 11 minutes (this is the 10 turn at around 5 miles) so even better. The return leg was slightly up hill but slightly wind assisted and my speed was generally 25-27 mph back to the start/finish point and here it looked like I was just inside 23 minutes. On to the second turn and this is where it all went horribly wrong - I managed to miss the turn. Unfortunately, there were neither signs (as there had been elsewhere) nor a marshall at the slip road - this is not really any excuse but I also had the wrong road number in my head when looking for the junction. It almost got worse as by the time I got back to where I was parked Sue was just leaving to come and look for me thinking I might have punctured again.

Ah well, these things happen. The course itself is, I think, potentially very fast if a little busy. The ten course is probably even faster as the extra bit added on for the 25 is slightly lumpier (I was actually down to 23 mph here).

Will I ride the course again? Well - I'll be back!

[tel]

What a bummer-when its not your day and all that. Sounds like your taking it in a good spirit.

See you soon

Terry