Stony '11.4' 29th April 2009

A very pleasant evening for the latest NBRC club event, over on the Stony Stratford course.  Following a few days for rainy weather, I chose to ride the trusty steel Cougar, which doesn't let the rain and road spray into the inner reaches of the frame (also, the saddle is a little less rigid than that on my other TT bike).  In the event, the weather was really rather pleasant - sunny and warm.  Unfortunately, of course, it also became quite breezy during the day.

By the time I arrived to sign on, at about 6.30pm, there were quite a few people milling about: I started as #17.  I got ready then rode up towards Beachampton to evaluate how the breeze would be - sure enough, it seemed as though we'd get a stiff headwind for most of the outward leg, and in particular as far as  Beachampton.

After starting, I quickly got upto a decent speed, but after the first bend you reach an undulating rise, and on this occasion into a headwind, which quickly knockd the stuffing out of me a bit.  The trials and tribulations continued, as the toes of my right foot started cramping.  Fortunately this wore off after a couple of miles!  The climb through Nash was really quite hard, and it was a relief to reach the relatively flat section running up to the turn.

One might have expected the return leg to feature a bit less effort, but judging from my HRM reading, this didn't seem to be the case, reaching 193bpm on a descent was a bit unexpected!  Mind you, I did notice a speed of 42.5mph at one point...

As usual, the last section between Beachampton and the finish at the outskirts of Stony Stratford was harder than expected - I finished in something like 28:20, which I wasn't too pleased with.

I had a nice enough ride home, accompanied part of the way by Tony Parks (who as expected had done better than I had, but was worrying about his training and whether it focussed a bit too much on his lengthy daily commute).

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