Finsbury Park CC '25' F1/25 10/8/08

This was a particularly tough morning on the F1/25 - perhaps the hardest I can recall, though at least the heavy rain we saw on Saturday did not make a reappearance.

 The initial section, roughly southbound to the Sandy RAB, gave me a little taster for what was to come later on: after descending the sliproad to the A1, it was most definitely going to be tough on both southbound legs. Unfortunately the reverse didn't seem to the true, while it's true I was whizzing along with a tailwind after the Sandy RAB (I topped 34mph at times), the benefits of the wind seemed to be absent some of the time.  Presumably this was due to the slightly serpentine nature of the course.  Despite most peoples' opinion, I'm a bit of an optimist, and usually on days like this I reach the turn think that maybe, just maybe, the return leg won't be as hard as I expect.  For today's event, I can safely say the return leg exceeded my direst prognostications.  On some of the more exposed sections, I was battered down below 20mph, and I'm sure I saw 17mph at one point.  (Jason Gurney claimed afterwards to have had to drop to the small ring at one point!).  I was caught by #90 for 3 minutes shortly after the turn, and even he seemed to be struggling into the wind after that.

The helpful organisers has included  a series of signs announcing 4 miles...3 miles...2 miles...1 mile as we approached the finish.  On a day like this, it just made it clear that a sub-hour result was going to be out of the question for me at least.

Most of us were a few minutes back on expectations, and I finished with a disappointing 1:00:52.  On the bright side, however, it did represent a pretty useful workout.

Click here for the results (as pdf).