Time trials - the road and the rider. Simple, right?
15th August
Saturday saw me and dad traveling over to Newark to race the Sherwood CC open 25mile TT on the A25/34. Mainly on the A46, a rolling dual carriageway TT with a start and finish on the single carriageway 'B' road. This was my first ever 25mile TT, I had done a club 25mile the week before but managed to unintentionally cut the corner making it more of a 20miler. This week I was determined to go the right way so I made sure to study the route and look at the junctions prior to the event.
This was also my first race after getting optimisation from Wattshop as part of #projectspeed so I was excited to see how the 'gains' would work out.
Warm up complete I made my way to the start, riding up and down the road as much because of nervous than anything. Standard start these days, no holder so clipping in one go was a must, something (touch wood) I don't usually have an issue with.
Left at the first round about then down the ramp onto the dual carriageway, a relatively quiet road. Reminded me of the dual carriageway course at Abergavenny. As I mentioned this was a rolling course with the main 'hill' being the climb of 'Bingham Hill'. A 2/3minute climb of 3/4%, nothing major but enough to slow you down. Bare in mind it was a tailwind out.
My opening 10miles was a 17:30~, my PB by just under 2minutes, if only that's how it worked. We all flew out to the turning on Strava I got the KOM on almost all of the segements out to the turning.
Around the round about and then into the headwind, it was a killer. On the way out I was spinning out on my 62/11 in some places. On the way home I didn't even touch the bottom of the block. It was a real slog back up the the 3rd round about, around 13miles of straight block headwind.
My finishing time is yet to be confirmed as there are no official results yet, but my Strava time which is usually about right +/- 10seconds, was 49:09.
Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/f6SI5aOg08
16th August
Sunday morning we were off the Mallory Park to take place on the Race Rapid Open 10 on the K10/MP. 10laps of the Lake at Kirby Mallory. It was bad weather conditions rain, mist and windy on the back straight. In general just a very Mallory Park day out, felt very much like a RSR.
The course is literally 10 laps of the motor circuit but it starts at the top of the hill.
This was my first ever open TT win, I finished with a 19:32 which was just under 30seconds quicker than 2nd place. No pictures from today but atleast we have some results.
Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/MYcuNUth08
Thanks to the organisation of both the races, it's great to be able to race on the road again. And thanks to Pedal Potential for the continued support!