Stony '11.4' 19/5/10

Another lovely sunny evening for a North Bucks Road Club evening time trial, and a return to the Stony Stratford course for another counting round in the club league.  There was also a gentle breeze that promised to toughen the outward leg.  Oh, and a profusion of greenfly in the air! There was quite a bit of discussion as to whether we should use the replacement Nash-Whaddon circuit, as on our previous event at Stony Stratford when the course was affected by roadworks.  In the end, we decided to go with the usual course, as riders who'd ridden the course earlier in the week said the road was clear enough (and so it proved).  What was more worrying was the comments that travellers had caused problems near the turn on Monday, with kids playing 'chicken' with the riders as they passed. After a slightly delayed start occasioned by a parade of sports cars and a group of horses, we were off.  For my part, I found the outward leg really very tough.  The first few miles are quite twisty, and the winter has most certainly not been kind to the road, with even more potholes added to the existing unrepaired road defects near Beachampton.  Dodging the potholes, I reached Beachampton and began the climb up to Nash.  I really suffered on the final stages to Nash (probably I need to lose a bit of weight to improve my power to weight ratio!).  In Nash a motorist had kindly parked on the bend, leaving their car door wide open while they looked at the back end of their car.  Avoiding this stellar parking act (and hoping that other riders, and indeed passing motorists would too), I pressed on up to the turn.  A clear ride round the turn and off on the return leg, where I felt I wasn't reaching the usual speed on the first section back to Nash.  Once through Nash the speed was up well over 40mph at times - though tempered with concern over bends in the road and assorted road defects to come. I roared through Beachampton and on over the twists, turns and astonishing potholed surfaces, putting a big effort to cross the line in 27:19.  This was better than I'd felt I was doing, but I really need to work on the climbing!  On the other hand, it was faster than any ride I did on this course last year. Results

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	10	Tony Parks	NBRC	26.23	V45	30.29	.+ 4.06	4
2	15	David Glossy	Team Corley Cycles	26.29	S
3	7	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	27.00	S
4	13	Robert Saunders	NBRC	27.19	V50	31.41	.+ 4.22	3
5	14	Glenn McMenamin	NBRC	27.35	S
6	8	Will Hilton	Virgin Active	28.06	S
7	5	Brian Primett	NBRC	29.12	V43	30.01	.+ 0.49	6
8	11	Aleck Hornshaw	TeamMK	30.18	V41	29.33	.- 0.45	8
9	6	Clive Faine	TeamMK	30.22	V63	35.05	.+ 4.43	2
10	9	John Buchanan	TeamMK	30.27	V40	29.20	.- 1.07	9
11	3	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	31.24	V67	36.13	.+ 4.49	1
12	4	Christine White	NBRC	33.01	LV45	32.26	.- 0.35	7
13	2	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	33.27	V69	36.48	.+ 3.21	5
14	1	Alan Lawson	NBRC	33.29	V41	29.33	.- 3.56	10
		Tandem
	16	Kevin Stokes	TeamMK	25.08
		Geoff Perry	TeamMK

And here's a map of the course (note that the northern end of the course has an additional section including a return to the car park).
View Stony '11.4' 19/5/10 in a larger map