Boxing Day Time Trial

With Tom kitten-sitting following a Christmas arrival, Jerry borrowed his bike to ride his first Boxing Day TT on the Maidenhead Thicket course and possibly his last in the current SWRC strip. What a great day to be out although a little chilly at 10am. There was an excellent turn-out of 20 riders with the winning time being 22mins 35sec by a certain John Tuckett who has apparently ridden sub-20mins. Well Jerry couldn't compete but did post his best for 2007 and is now keen to compete more aggressively next season.

To all fellow bloggers - best wishes for the New Year!, T&J

Paul Alderson

On the way back to Cobham I got to talk to Paul while climbing up Coombe bottom. Paul rode the 750 mile Paris-Brest-Paris this year and regularly trains around the Surrey hill in preparation for his long distant event. Paul holds the current club record for the 24Hrs where he covered 431 miles.

Graham Collins

When we arrived at the tea room in Horsham I met up with Graham Collins who had ridden up from Worthing where he lives. Graham joined the SWRC in 1953, aged 15 and developed into a fast time triallist, being the first member to beat the hour for 25 miles and holding the club record in 1955. Nowerdays he prefers to ride cyclosportives and a couple of years ago completed all 8 UCI goldenbike events UCI

Trevor Lenthall

A dozen riders were out on the A group club run on Saturday, which left Cobham heading for the teastop in Horsham. Like last week's ride, it was only just above freezing and most of us were pleased to head straight there.
Here is one of our most talented cyclosportive riders, Trevor , talking about next years MEGA event taking place in north Wales.

More holiday news

Away from the December murk and to beautiful sunny Madrid instead for a cheeky weekend break. Mariana trekked out by train via Paris while I slummed it on Easyjet. Cold but sunny on Saturday, we mooched around Parque Retiro; found a good bike shop and bought winter jackets and sunglasses; sniffed out a superb Basque restaurant for a long lunch; admired the new towers going up in the financial district; saw the Christmas lights; and had jamon and vino tinto for supper. Sunday we went to the Sierra Guadarrama an hour's drive north and had a chilly walk on the lower slopes of the 2500m La Maliciosa. An excellent weekend though I still missed the grind down to High Beeches and back in the freezing cold back home.

Lake District Weekend

No bike riding this weekend as Fi and I are visiting family in the Lakes the week before Xmas, While Fi and her sister entertain their father in the Cheshire Homes nursing home at Holehird I do a bit of mild hill walking up the adjacent mountain to the top of Ill Belle on the Kentmere Horseshoe above Troutbeck. Freezing conditions make the long grass glisten with ice and they bob in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags, but it's no day to stand around and I need to keep walking to keep warm. I can see the cars crawling up the lower slopes of the Kirkstone Pass on the opposite side of the valley, It will be closed as soon as the snow falls but luckily there is none yet only a cover on all the tops which are mostly also in the cloud. On the way down I pass a few mountain bikers walking or at least progressing very slowly over the rocky packhorse route to the saddle and on to Kentmere, one shares a passing resemblance to tennis ace Andy Murray struggling in bottom gear, I give them a shout as I jog down to meet Fi outside the Church in Troutbeck for Coffee and a Mince pie

John Harris / Runs secretary

Here's John Harris who has taken over from Patrick Cangley as the club's run secretary. Patrick did a great job and I know John will carry on with similar high standards.

Today's (A group) ride was cut short as it was only just above freezing, and we (3) ended up stopped at High beeches tea room. Here is John & Andy outside the lunch stop, where we met up with Sabin.

VTTA Best All Rounder Comp

Results of the 3 and 4 distance BAR for the over 40s are in
cdp gives a resume of the results and how he fared

In the 4 Distance 25,50,100 and 12 Hour I was placed 12th on standard in the country with with an average speed of 25.409mph or +5.234 Winner and 10 years older than me at 55 years of age was Ken Platts of the Cambridge CC with 26.880mph or +8.157
In the fastest category I was 5th the winner again being Ken Platts who placed 7th in the CTT National BBAR but his faster 25 (not included in the CTT series) saw him leapfrog Paul Holdsworth of the Houndslow and Carl Ruebotham of Swift both who beat him in that competition
Full results at http://www.vtta.org.uk/BAR%20Results.htm

In the 3 distance 25,50 and 100 us young'uns were well outclassed, I was placed 58th with an aggregate time of 26.452mph +116.42 but the winner was 73 year old Derek Hodgins of Stockport Clarion with 25.057mph +208.29 just pipping 75 year old Jim Goodwin of Sheffield Phoenix 24.565mph +206.28
The younger Vets fared better in the Fastest(aggregate) myself placed 12th with 6.39.18 to the winner Paul Holdsworth 27.870mph 6.21.27 snatching the win by 20 sec fron Ruebotham 6.21.47 and Platts third this time 6.25.03
Because I live in Leicester I ride for the Nottingham and East Midlands section of the 'VTTA' I was placed 5th in my region I just snuck into the six man team as the youngest rider that placed 2nd in the National Group Classification ably backing Jim Goodwin and 72 year old Clifford Tremain of the Kettering who managed 17th position Nationally on a trike
Full results at http://www.vtta.org.uk/3%20Distance%20BAR.htm

If you fancy racing with the VTTA have a look at their website
http://www.vtta.org.uk/index.htm

The People’s Million’s £50m lottery giveaway

Don't forget to vote.

Thetford round two

Raymond blows up!

Sunday was the second round of the winter series at Thetford. Once again it was a sell out and 500 had signed up to race. However, the weather forecast although dry all week showed a torrential downpour at 9.00 am., an hour and half before the start. This led to a rush of....'anyone want my place? I've got a sore throat, I have to work.....etc' posts on the website :-)

I had rested well since the last round and felt stronger, pretty good in fact. So I decided to change that! The night before the race was Paul's birthday so Jane made cake,but Paul couldn't make it. So I ate cake, loads of it. So much that my stomach was like a balloon when I went to bed. It was still like that, and very sore, when I got up at six the next morning. I couldn't face breakfast and hoped to eat some torq bars on the way.


It was chucking it down when we arived at Thetford, I went for a quick warm up and got absolutely soaked fom the standing water and was shaking from the cold, so we sat in the car to keep warm. At the start the queues were already five deep. I queued on the left, because the tight left turn a 100m after the start had a huge puddle also on the left, but just out of sight. I figured that most would swing right on seeing the puddle and I would go straight through it.

The klaxon sounded and everyone sprinted into the first corner. I got ready for the veer to the right at the puddle, so I could take the left line through it. Instead the front runners stopped dead, so I flicked right and through the centre clipping a couple of bars in the process!

This track was 500m of big ring very wet fire road descending at 40kph into a wall of spray from the standing water into a 90deg off camber left. This caused a few problems and people were overshooting it. Then into the first singletrack, which though wet was very fast. a few fast bermy turns and back onto the fire road to the first bombhole: this was very deep but, quite straight in and out. I've raced this part of the course before and the next bit is great fun, the locals call it the beast! It's a singletrack descent through the woods made up of a series of rollercoaster whoops and berms. The most fun way to ride this is roadie style lined out tucked in, inches from each others wheel :-))) This spits you out across a fire road and straight up a singletrack climb. I can hear people behind me whooping as they came down the beast.

This section is always quite tough because coupled with the ascent is a claggyness in the surface. Here the heavier riders tend to suffer and it's easy to pass riders, particularly later in the race as people tire.

The rest of the lap followed in true Thetford style ie hard fire road sections(for some reason always into the wind!) and fast jiggly, rooty singletrack.

I had decided to eat at the end of the second lap, I tried to eat half a torq bar, even though I could barely swallow it. I had a couple of bottles of energy drink by the course at the start/finish area, so I grabbed them as I went through.

By the end of the third lap my legs were getting a bit wobbly, and I still couldn't eat.

The sixth lap is where I met my maker and everything went a bit Lewis Carroll. Suddenly gravity increased tenfold, my bike seemed three sizes too big and the world narrowed to a small fuzzy circle in front of me. The little man with the big hammer had arrived and.....bonk, he hit me hard!!! I had to walk a couple of the short sharp climbs and freewheel down the other side :-)

At about halfway through this lap Alan Parkinson's friend from the London Pheonix caught me; he was blowing fairly hard. I guess he must have seen me and put in an effort. We rode together while he got his breath back and I introduced myself as Alan's other friend. He then slowly pulled away. Paul came through sometime later and slowly but inexorably moved ahead. Meanwhile I died a little bit more:-)

Towards the end of the lap, I realised that I might beat the four hour cut-off and be 'allowed' to do another lap. Another lap was out of the question! Now I was faced with a quandary; do I deliberately ease even more, miss the cut and have the decision not to do another lap made for me or do I press on and deliberately 'pull out'. I passed through the start/finish and the guy shouted 'go on you'll get another lap' . I pressed the stop button on my gps and it read 03:59:58. Their official time was 03:59:25.

It was frustrating as I been going so well and no one in the latter part of the race passed me with any pace. Still, I'm pleased that my strength has returned and I managed to get tenth in the vets without eating :-)

Paul managed another lap and took 9th place vets.

pics by Joolze Dymond

Washout

A grim old day today so a picture to remind us of better weather and scenery from earlier this year.

The Roundhurst Farm route was abandoned and instead it was a quick spin down to Ryka's Cafe. Most of the guys went in for tea; Trevor and I carried on riding; Sabin couldn't make his mind up and took the compromise option - he went in the cafe but didn't have anything to eat or drink! Back home at 11.30 - possibly a record. Mariana was out on her brand new bike. Not the ideal conditions and guess who's going to clean it.

Cold & wet in Sutton

Rather than getting soaked on a Club run, Tom went off to play in Sutton where the local Club was running a BCF Talent Team test and where the SWRC Committee's newest member could spy on the activities of a vibrant youth cycling club. He had to mount an unfamiliar MTB (whatever next!) and compete in a couple of short 60m sprints and a short 2 lap circuit. As the weather was miserable just turning out was commendable. He is now awaiting the outcome of the races however he did make some progress on the matter of 'Junior clubs' - more anon.

Thetford Winter Series Round 2

A race on my birthday. Reinforcing my vets status.

A four hour race, then finish the lap you're on.

So on Sunday 2 December I got up at 05.30 and had a huge breakfast then set off for the race near Thetford in Norfolk.

Before the start of the race even, I felt tired due to a busy week at work. Remember, get your excuses in early.

Anyway, so I didn't push to the front part of the assembled cyclists. This was a big big mistake. When the horn fired the guy in front of me wasn't even on his bike and just ambled on. I couldn't get past him as people shot by so I was stuck near the back with all the cagoule wearers. I managed to get past a few before the first singletrack but then gave up and ambled along with them all whenever we were in singletrack. This being Thetford, there was quite a lot of singletrack.

For three laps I was stuck in with the cagoule wearers.

I do have to admit at this point I had mine on for the first lap - a sign I was going to take it easy anyway. But I just started to overheat and there was only drizzle, how do people wear them for four hours?

Being tired I found I lacked power and it made no difference when I got out of the saddle to power past people, so I was stuck behind folk ambling through all the singletrack. I could build up speed on the fire road sections and this was how I got past people.

Eventually I got free of the slower four hour racers. I knew I was a long way back though - I had seen people ahead on the course where it ran back past itself ten minutes later, so just tried to enjoy the course.

The course was like porridge to start with so wasn't easy going, they took the biggest bomb hole out after one run through it, I guess it was too wet and muddy at the bottom of it for 500 riders.

The other major bombhole stayed in though and with mud at the bottom it needed a carefully guided ride down into it and a big push out.

With a muddy course my chain jumped for a couple of laps until I squirted water from my Camelbak onto it then once it started jumping again I squirted energy drink from my bottle onto it. This seemed to do the trick and it jumped no more. In the meantime the bigger rollercoaster sections had been perilous as I couldn't rely 100% on my chain not slipping as I hammered the bike over the peaks.

Then on lap six I caught the guy who had been 7th in round one. SWRC rider Raymond Hallam. Good grief. Talking to him he said he had been chasing with a guy who had previously been third then completely blown and was having a hard time finishing lap six.

I finished lap six with three minutes of the race left so thought I would carry on, maybe I would catch more on the last lap.

I didn't.

I was ninth. I was quite happy with that considering the race was always going to be damage limitation, but looking at lap times in the results my last four laps were all quicker than the guys from fifth onwards. If only I had taken my cagoul off at the start and pushed to the front. I was less than ten minutes off of sixth - a big difference and would have pushed me up the overall results.
Overall so far, Ray is 7th and I am 8th.

1st December clubrun (A group) from Betchworth

Here is a short chat with the club sponsor, Gary (Evans Cycles) Smith, on what he hopes to achieve in the 2008 racing season.

And here's Battersea Bob, the taxi driver, who has a few thoughts of his own.

Here are the reprobates from the A group who had a short ride today to the Tudor Rose tearooms in Westerham. We had all ridden out to the meeting point in Betchworth, and I had covered 70 miles by the time I got home.

Here are some shots of other club members waiting at Betchworth: http://pics-by-swrc.fotopic.net/c1418249.html