Hitchin Nomads '10' (F1/10) 31/7/11

A lovely morning greeted us as we loaded my bike into the car.  As we drove over to Tempsford, the conditions became rather misty though this had cleared by the time we lined up at the start.  Also rather disappointing was the head wind to the turn, which rendered the outbound leg rather stodgy - I was certainly struggling to keep the speed over 25mph. The current incarnation of the F1/10 runs southbound from near Tempsford, across the Sandy roundabout to turn at the Biggleswade North (Warden Lane) roundabout, with a finish line really close to Tempsford Hall.  Joining the A1 after the start is rather nice - it's a sliproad coming down from a flyover.  Unfortunately, the 29+mph I'd got up to coming down the sliproad soon evaporated and I was plugging along trying to keep the speed above 25mph.  Once at the turn, things looked up a bit and I found myself doing 28-30 mph most of the way back from the turn. I finished with 22:33 (somewhat better than I'd expected in the first half of the race), around 18 seconds slower than Tony.  In fact there weren't many really quick times today - the event was won with a 21, I think. Back home, where Tony and I had cappuccinos, then nipped out for a 33 mile easy ride  out through Soulbury, Stewkley and Hoggeston, during which we saw some charity bike ride under way.  All in all a rather good Sunday morning.

Pos	Rider	Club	Time
1	J Bates	Team Milton Keynes	00:21:15	V
2	T Davies	Icknield RC	00:21:42	V
3	D Kealey	Finchley RT	00:21:56	V
4	N Stephens	Finchley RT	00:22:03	V
5	A Strickland	Cambridge CC	00:22:12	V
6	T Parks	North Bucks RC	00:22:15	V
7	S Tarry	Chronos RT	00:22:16	S
8	N Pitt	Chronos RT	00:22:18	S
9	C Symonds	Bike and Run London	00:22:29	S
10	K Gill	PCA Ciclos Uno	00:22:30	V
11	I Bibby	Finsbury Park CC	00:22:31	V
12	R Saunders	North Bucks RC	00:22:33	V
13	G Perry	Team Milton Keynes	00:22:35	V
14	J Hargrave	Spalding CC	00:22:36	S
15	K Read	North Norfolk Wheelers	00:22:53	V
16	P Davis	St Ives CC	00:22:57	V
17	A Halliday	Westerley CC	00:23:00	S
18	N Ellison	Beyond/WDBMC/Specialized/RRP	00:23:02	S
19	M Horton	CC Ashwell	00:23:10	S
20	R Palmer	Team Salesengine.co.uk	00:23:25	V