Astwood '10', 22nd April 2009

We had a splendid evening for this North Bucks RC club event, once again held up at the Astwood circuit - sunny, and with not much more than a breath of wind.  This event was designated as a "Come and Try It" event, and riders were requested to be there by 6.30pm (also, starts were limited to 30 due to the failing light as this is still early season for an evening event).  I had brought along a couple of guys along from work, but sadly we were thwarted.  By the time we arrived, there appeared to be hundreds of riders milling around and all 30 slots had unfortunately been allocated.  Fortunately, this didn't seem to disappoint my two new acquaintances, and Ian Stokes kindly suggested I ask someone of they'd be interested in riding a 2-up.  At this point my beady eye cast around and spotted Lindz Barrall, with whom I had ridden a 2-up at Astwood earlier in the season.

Fortunately for me, Lindz was up for a two up, and set his Garmin for a 23:30 pace.  Last time we had finished in 24:19, so that was quite a proposed improvement.  But then again, this was a lovely evening...  The only strategic discussion we had was to decide that this time I would lead off from the start.  Once out on the road, we didn't exchange a single word - all chanegovers (bar one) were accomplished smoothly, and all in all we rode very well.

Probably the only point where we faltered was when we caught a rider just after Chicheley, and it wasn't clear to me whether Lindz had pulled over for a changeover or just to pass the rider or, indeed, both - asit turned out.  It was quite a quick evening - very fast down the main road to Chicheley, and also a pretty good speed back up towards North Crawley.

I would like to suggest we roared past the finish line, but that would be rather economical with the truth, as the finish is right at the top of the Astwood climb, and in fact we'd both parcelled out our effort pretty well - I for one wouldn't have fancied climbing much further.  We reckoned we'd finished in 23:04 or thereabouts, which was a good improvement on last time...

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