20:53 (PB)

The crew came out to ‘watch’ this one (read: drink coffee in the carpark for ~20min) but it’s always good to have someone there to help or support or both. Arrived in good time for a change and had decided not to bother taking a turbo for warmup due to the rain. Of course it wasn’t raining when I arrived so I just rode up past the start and then back close to go time.

I’d not ridden this H10/22 course before so had collected some useful tips from the ‘sperts on lfgss as well as a bit of Google StreetView crawling (I must’ve been keen!). Plan was basically not to go out too hard like last time and then lift when it ramped up a bit on the way out and again on the way back. It kind of worked. I felt I’d done pretty poorly, but to be honest my power wasn’t as far off the last 10 mile I rode (and won).

I took heed and started out ‘easy’ but then found I couldn’t really lift later on so settled into a bit of a miserable groove thinking I was doing rubbish. Both the RABs were taken very slowly because it was damp, my brakes aren’t the best in the wet and I couldn’t see a bloody thing through my stupid visor! I had to keep sitting up to look under it and wiping it off with a finger to get about 30 seconds of decent vis before it fogged up again. Grr.. serves me right for taping up the vents. I should’ve applied some of that anti-fog stuff I bought last time this happened. At least I’ll know for next time. I was managing to lift the power quite a bit on the draggy uphill sections but it was annoying I couldn’t seem to motivate myself to keep it on for the flatter parts. WIth a mile to go I was confident I could PB and I picked it up a bit, stopping the clock but not really noticing what time I’d done. I only accept official times anyway so I like to wait until I see it on the board. PB by 23 seconds on less power thanks to the course mostly I’d guess. It wasn’t windy which helped too although the vis problems counteracted that.

Adam Topham won the event with a 19:16 (but he writes books on time trialling so he should be fast ;)).

Met Andy from the forum and chatted, ate some cake, clapped the winners, drove home and took Mal to brekkie. Thanks to the organisers and the (large number of) marshalls, helpers, etc.