Astwood 10 20/8/14

This was rather a cool evening, cooler than we’d experienced for a while now. Not bad conditions, with only a fairly light breeze. I was hoping for continued good form, though after a couple of hard days at work I wasn’t so sure things would pan out OK. We had a good turnout of 22 riders for this club event.

As we lined up for the start, we were rather appalled to find a small car parked exactly on the line. We quite properly resisted the idea of using the car as a starting ramp, and took the pragmatic decision to move the start a couple of bike lengths forward (the two lads who’s car it was moved it after a bit). There was quite a bit of combine harvesting going on, and at times a large cloud of dust and hay fragments could be seen billowing up from a field just ahead of us. Indeed, some starters appeared to vanish into it!

I set off quite briskly, taking my usual cautious approach to the first left turn. Out on the main road, I settled down into a decent rhythm. No real issues from the wind on my front wheel, except when I was passed (rather closely I might add) by an unfeasibly tall removals lorry. This left a spectacularly turbulent wake behind it, which gave me pause for thought. I had a moment of doubt turning left after Chicheley, on a rad surface liberally coated with wheat grain - I wondered whether this would be slippy, but evidently not!

I roared back up towards North Crawley, feeling pretty good, and staying low on the tribars. This just felt really efficient, and I have found I need to come off the tribar extensions far less frequently on the new TT bike. On the way round, I passed one of the Team Chrono guys pumping a tyre - he finished despite a puncture, and Steve walking barefoot, also having punctured.

I ended up taking the win with 23:36, which is always nice. Some pretty good times for such an unpromising evening!