Last Saturday, was the first race of the season. – A hilly 10.2 mile TT organised by Andover Wheelers. The course was shortened slightly due to some hedge trimming. The hedge cutter was one of the few vehicles on the road. It was a very quite course in terms of traffic which was nice.
It starts with a pretty tough climb up Conholt Hill and then quite a fast descent. There’s another hill half way round, which seems to go on for a long time with a demoralising headwind. Then there is another fairly sharpish and fast descent. It’s certainly an interesting course with very little flat.
The race is very different to the Andover Wheelers 10 on the P613 dual carriageway course. That attracts an oversubscribed field of 270. A hilly 10 in the middle of February, attracts a somewhat smaller entry, can’t think why…. Well, I did my fastest 10 mile time on that course in 2008 – Andover 10
Event was well organised with a few photographers on route. It’s not much the most attractive time of the year to be racing (I was wearing 3 pairs of gloves), but doesn’t make a nice change from plodding around the grey Oxfordshire countryside on a slow winter training bike…
I finished first with a time of 24.05 ahead of William Girvan
| 1 Tejvan Pettinger (Sri Chinmoy CT) | 24:05 | |
| 2 William Girvan (North Hampshire RC) | 25:48 | |
| 3 Sean Williams (Wightlink Offshore RT) | 25:53 | |
| 4 Bryce Dyer (Votwo.co.uk) | 25:57 | |
| 5 Simon Healey (Andover Wheelers) | 26:26 |
photo top: Charles Whitton.
Just passing by. Excellent result, very good speed so early in the year. Looks like you’ve got a nice new bike there – Mark Jones has one too. Cheers, Howard
http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/uk-time-trial-round-up-sybrandy-breaks-another-record-in-surrey-25017