Stoke Hammond 10 7th September 2013

Rather a cool morning, which I suppose indicates autumn is now upon us! There was also a rather stiff breeze as I rode over to the start area for the first of two 10 mile time trials (the other being the Icknield RC '10' on the F15/10). Also rather annoying was that the problems I'd been having with my cadence sensor while in France recently were persisting (erratic readings often at least double the real readings), and indeed compounded by absolutely no HR data being received from the chest strap. Ho hum. And we can add another of those cases where the Garmin couldn't start up properly. Nevertheless I lined up to start while trying not to think about the defective computer. I'd been warned about a trench-like road defect at one of the roundabouts, and I had my eye out for that - particularly since I had had an alarming incident on this course last time due to a roundabout pothole. In the run up to the first roundabout, some twonk driving a khaki coloured van or 4x4 towing a big trailer scared the pants off me by driving close and hooting his horn. Apart from that, I had no trouble with traffic, despite the traffic volume, which at 9am on a Saturday was somewhat higher than we see in the evening events. At some point just before the second roundabout, the Garmin decided to announce, via a loud beep, that it had begun to function. As I'd thought as I rode out to the event, the ride up to the dual carriageway was into a rather stiff headwind, what was rather depressing was that this persisted after turning onto the dual carriageway. Still, I thought, it'll be easier on the return leg. And so it proved, at least until the final straight (which always feels much harder to me than it looks like it ought to). With one eye on the Icknield RC event later in the day, I did try to keep the gears a bit lower than usual, but I found as usual that this just slowed me down! I finished with 23:41 - quite reasonable given the conditions - and wondered what the afternoon's event would be like - particularly the fast descent at the start - in the windy conditions. Results at the NBRC website.