Stoke Hammond '10' 2nd May 2012 - made it!

After my recent spate of punctures, I can be forgiven for feeling that I was never going to make it to the end of a time trial. Or even to the start.  So at this point, I'll cut to the chase and say that on this evening, I contrived to make it to the finish line. Of course, what would this report be without a puncture.  As it happens, I generally ride my time trial bike to work and go straight from work to the race.  Today was no exception, and I rolled away from the house with all hope that my ride to work would be uneventful.  For a change, it wasn't actually raining.  Unfortunately, about one and a half miles from home, b-l-a-a-p! My front tyre exploded.  I could see a 5mm gash with fragments of green latex exposed. After a minor verbal explosion which included a large proportion of the four letter words offered by the full breadth of the English language, I stopped at the road side to effect temporary repairs to puncture #7.  After using a patch to hold the cut together and putting a new tube in, I gingerly rode home to sort out a better repair (with a replacement tyre*). Somewhat miraculously, I made it both to work, and down to the event in the evening, without further mishap.  The event itself was ridden in dry but heavily overcast conditions. There was a pretty strong wind, and it wasn't warm.  However it was a tail wind up the hill to the dual carriageway section, and enough of a tail wind to the turn to make the outward leg rather brisk.  Unfortunately the converse was that the return leg was pretty brutal at times.  I was caught by Tony about halfway back from the turn, which came as no surprise to me.  On the final stretch to the finish, I was having quite a bit of trouble holding a straight line, such was the buffeting from the wind.  I finished in 23:46, which was OK, I suppose, a little slower than my last outing on this course, but relative to other riders I think I'm improving. *as I write, I'm still awaiting the real replacement tyres, ordered online following Saturday's debacle. Results (at the NBRC website)