Astwood '10' 14th May 2025

After a delightful warm spring morning, I think all of us lining up for this North Bucks Road Club evening '10' on the Astwood circuit course probably expected a nice warm evening. Unfortunately we were a bit disappointed as the temperature started falling quite quickly. I was quite glad I'd brought a warm jacket with me for the ride home.

Aside from the falling temperature, there was a distinct breeze which served to help me along the way down the A422 from Astwood to Chicheley and the first turn. Of course, there would be a downturn to that, but it's always good to get off the main road quickly. And aside from a double decker bus buffeting me, I had a pretty quck ride on this section.

Starting!

From the Chicheley turn, I felt quite sheltered from the wind by hedgerows, so while I was probably hindered by it, it wasn't as bad as it might have been. What was more of a hindrance was the group of bike riders out for an evening ride who seemed intent on riding three or four abreast as I approached the T-junction in North Crawley.

From there, I don't think I had any traffic related problems, just dodging potholes! All too soon I reached the bottom of the final climb to the line. At this point I experienced the time dilation effect often seen towards the end of a time trial: time seems to drag through most of the race, but seems to speed up as you approach the finish. In this evening's event, I seriously thought I might finish in around 23 and a half minutes. But the seconds zoomed by as I ground up the final climb to finish in 24 minutes exactly.

Finishing!

I failed to turn off my Garmin as I crossed the line, but I did mentally note my time. I was a little disappointed, but comparisons with other riders suggested it was a slightly harder evening than the previous outing on this course. I also narrowed the margin to at least one key rider. I came in third, and first on veteran standard. See the NBRC website for full results.

After a bit social jibber-jabber, some of us repaired to the newly re-opened Old Swan in Astwood for a beer and additional chat. Most enjoyable. Then I dashed off home to try and get there before it was fully dark.

Just a quick comment on equipment. After last week's difficulty with the 90mm front wheel in the windy conditions, I switched to a Hed H3 trispoke shod with a 23mm Conti GP5000, which was altogether better. Unfortunately judging from the clicking noises it was making, I think it may be going the same way as an earlier H3 where the alloy rim de-bonded from the carbon fibre. I had that wheel repaired by Carbon Cycle Solutions in Leighton Buzzard - perhaps I'll be paying them another visit.

The photographs in this report are by Jim Eastment, the whole gallery is online. Great photos taken just after the start and on the final climb to the finish line.

Looking at the ride data (below - click to enlarge), I was pretty happy. Other than the turns I seemed to keep up a pretty consistent power, and the normalised power for the 24 minutes came in at about 257W. A closer look at Athletica's Workout Reserve suggests I could have gone a smidge harder though. It'll be interesting to see how I go on Sunday's open event over two laps of this course (though with a different start/finish).

 And here's the wind direction chart - mostly an angled sidewind this evening.