The day after Storm Amy saw pretty cool temperatures and still blustery winds. This year’s hill climb was to be on the Bow Brickhill course, essentially right up Church Road. On the day we had a few issues holding the event.

I turned up fairly early as did the other competitor. Yes, we only had two entries! Both of us kept riding up and down the Woburn Sands road in an effort to keep warm. Meanwhile Dick arrived with signs and watches, as did Dave Bruce and Bryan Scarborough. As I returned from another warmup spin, I passed Andy who called out something incomprehensible about horses.

Together with my regular 2-up partner Gerry, I rode the famous Duo Normand time trial every year from 2003 to 2019, bar one. In 2020, it was absent from the calendar owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. It didn't reappear in the following years, and most of us thought it had gone for good. But in mid-2025, it was announced that it would return on 21st September 2025, on a revised course of 40km. With the announcement coming quite late in the year, fewer teams than in the past were able to enter, with very few from the UK. But despite advancing years and dubious fitness, Team Grumpy decided to cross the Channel for another ride in the this splendid event. We were not disappointed.

In September 2003 I first rode the Duo Normand, a well-established 2-up team time trial in the Normandy countryside around Marigny. My teammate for that, and every subsequent Duo Normand ride, was my regular 2-up partner. We semi-seriously style ourselves Team Grumpy, and we have a Team Grumpy website. We rode the Duo Normand every year from 2003 to 2019, except for one year. The high point was our victory in the Corporatif category in 2010, but since then age has brought with it diminishing returns.

Team Grumpy on the way to victory in the 2010 Duo Normand, soundtracked by a cacophony of infants and church bells, but total indifference from the crowd.

I switched to Athletica.ai as my preferred training platform pretty much a year ago, and aside from a brief absence from the platform (after which I had to start pretty much from scratch) I’ve found it pretty good on the whole. Athletica seems to be well-rooted in the science of training, with a significant reliance on HIIT workouts. A typical workout schedule for me generally has one HIIT workout each week (shown below via intervals.icu below, click the image to enlarge).

This was the final event in our series of evening club events, and attracted 13 entries (though one didn’t start owing to illness. Through the day we’d had some spectacular thunderstorms and extremely blustery conditions with gusts of up to 48mph. Clearly not ideal, but at least by the time we started the event things had calmed down, and despite there being several heavy showers tracking around Cranfield, I think all the riders completed the course without getting wet.

For my part, I found the outward leg down to Newport Pagnell rather tough and the still rather gusty wind made it impossible to keep on the aero extensions. I was caught at the turn for a minute by a fast rider on a road bike. Things were a bit better on the return leg and I was making better progress to the finish. I ended up in third place with 25:52, good enough for second on veteran standard.

This evening ’10’ came after a fortnight of dealing with a right leg injury (bizarrely incurred while mounting the tandem) and a longer period of family related stress, both significantly denting my training, all mixed in with a few hospital appointments.

Last week, I rode a club event on the Cranfield course, which I won with a narrow margin, but at some cost to my right leg’s recovery. Frankly I didn’t really pull out a strong performance that evening. So I was keen to see how I was going via this evening’s event.

This review really focusses on  the optical HR data collection with my newly purchased Polar Vantage V3 watch.

Last autumn, I bought a Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch, largely to collect data that was then pulled in by Athletica.ai, such as sleep, resting HR and HRV. Watches have never really been a maor part of my sports data collection - because I almost explusively train on a bike, I generally collect data via a Garmin Edge bike computer (currently an 840), or via trainer software such as Zwift. So, why go back to Polar, specifically the Vantage V3?

I noticed the other day, via the GP Lama YouTube channel that the latest firmware update for the Garmin/Tacx Neo 3M trainer (and, I think, the version 2 and 2T Neo trainers) enables virtual shifting on the Zwift platform.

I run Zwift on an AppleTV in my garage using a Tacx Neo 3M trainer, and I experience some issues. Firstly, the AppleTV bluetooth remote buttons are gradually breaking, presumably an accretion of sweat damage. Replacements aren’t cheap (and might just go the same way). Secondly, I often have a bit of trouble with jumping gears while training, particularly in intense intervals.

I was rather pleased to have more moderate weather for this event - rather than hitting the 30 degree mark, we were in the low 20s. I looked at the weather and decided it was sufficiently blustery that I needed to take care with my front wheel choice. In the end I think that my decision to ride the P3C with its Hed trispokes was wise. In any case, I want to get some rides on on it to do any fine-tuning before the Duo Normand (if they ever open entries).

The opening section along the bumpy University Way ends with a left turn onto the road to North Crawley and Newport Pagnell (we turn just after the 'civic amenity site'. Much of this leg is downhill, but the expected speed didn't really materialise because of the haed wind. Additionally it was quite difficult to see the many road defects in the evening sun. This particularly bad as you approach North Crawley.

This event was moved from the scheduled Brogborough course owing to roadworks. I decided to try the backup Cervelo P3C TT bike for this event, largely because I was interested to see if my recently resolved foot pain issue might move my L-R balance back closer to 50:50. The bike has Favero Assioma power meter pedals and venerable Hed H3 trispokes front and rear. I think it looks the part...here I am just after turning left onto the main road.

I have this set up with SRAM 11-speed Red eTap - there are gear switches on the base bar but I'm using the blip box as switches while on the aero extensions - you can see it by my right hand in the photo. This works well, but I'm going to try and sort out a more rigid way of affixing the blip box.