Sunday was a 50 mile TT on the Bentley course (H50/8). Not a bad day, apart from a tough headwind and being quite cold.
The start was pretty tough. Uphill into the headwind. It’s easy to overcook it as you try to maintain a seemingly respectable speed into very difficult conditions. The course is made more difficult by quite a few patches of rough road. It’s not potholey, just hard work with lots of vibration. When you get to the turn at Chawtrey roundabout, there is a very welcome tailwind, and your speed goes up considerably. Once you get past Honeybourne roundabout, the road surface becomes much smoother. There is a fantastic section of 7 miles smooth road and tailwind. Here you’re average speed shoots up and its great fun. But, you’re always conscious of the old law of Physics ‘what comes up, goes down’ or ‘strong tailwind on way out, means strong headwind on way back’
Time Triallist
So from 35 mph, you drop back to 20-23 mph. On the last circuit, I was slowing quite a bit, paying for the fast start. At times, I was running a bad chain-line 56*21. (On the big outer cog and big inner cog)
Somehow, there was a psychological barrier to going on the inner ring. I know these roads well, often doing fast 10s, and so it felt ‘wrong’ to be going onto the inner ring. I was stubbornly resisting. In an effort to keep speed up, I was mashing the gears a bit. Running a big gear from early on in the race, rather than try maintain high cadence and ‘souplesse’ as they say on the continent.
I may have to bite the bullet and one day buy a power meter. When it’s really windy, it’s easy to get the pacing wrong as you focus on speed rather than effort. We shall see.
I finished third in a respectable time of 1.52.16. It was three minutes off a pb, but a tough day. I might enter the National 50 now.
1. Nick Dwyer Lewes Wanderers Cycling Club 1:50:29
2 Sebastian Ader a3crg 1:50:40
3 Tejvan Pettinger Sri Chinmoy Cycling Team 1:52:16
4 Ian Greenstreet Newbury Road Club 1:52:28
5 Rob Pelham Lewes Wanderers Cycling Club 1:52:40
6 Grigor Wallace Team Midland Racing 1:53:21
7 Russell Kober Hainault RC 1:53:23
8 Dan Sadler RT 316 1:53:29
9 David Pollard In-Gear Quickvit Trainsharp RT 1:53:39
10 Chris Goodfellow Drag2Zero 1:53:53
Thanks to all at Charlotteville who helped in organising this popular race (120 riders in total)
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