Abducted by Aliens: NBRC club 10 17/7/08 F5d/10

Well, I felt pretty good for this club event, had mysterious effects on my Polar 720i HRM bike computer, and ended up with a slightly lacklustre performance!

As I rode over to the event, dodging the surface dressing of loose gravel on the roads, it was clear that my Polar HRM was misreporting the speed, mostly claiming a speed approximately double that which I felt I was travelling, sometimes cutting out, and sometimes (all to rarely) behaving itself.  Anyway, i got to the event, signed on, and eventually lined up to start.

My ride itself was done to heart rate rather than speed (for the above reasons) and it did take me about half the event to get up to a reasonable HR, possibly I was still a bit jaded after Sunday's '100'.  Overall, I felt like I was firing well, and caught two riders.  Roaring down the descent to the finish, I checked the timer on the HRM as was hugely encouraged - I was, I thought, heading for a course PB.  I crossed the line with the HRM showing 22:33 and allowing for a few seconds for the auto start function was pretty pleased.  I was disappointed to see my time recorded as 22:56.  Several scenarios came to mind, perhaps Tony and Mary had made a mistake with the timing (very unlikely I reckoned, but it might have been a handwriting issue!), or I was perhaps abducted by aliens, thereby causing a loss of 30 seconds from my life.  Unlikely to all except Fox Mulder.  In reality i think it was the damned Polar cutting out.  I'll investigate with the turbo bike and see what's going on.  Perhaps.

Anyway, we had a great turnout of 27 riders, and only one puncture in the event (though Simon Cannings punctured en route to the start) 

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