This year, we decided to visit some of the southern Hebridean islands that we hadn't ventured to before. This report is written using Microsoft Sway. We used our newest tandem, a Thorn tandem - it behaved impeccably and we continue to have no issues with the Rohloff hub. Or the 32-spoke wheels. Or the S&S couplings.

After a couple of weeks without racing (and indeed a week off the bike), I turned out for the club '10' on a sunny evening at the end of May. I've been getting a little concerned about the downturn in my form lately, which is partly why I took a bit of a break from training, so I was keen to see how this evening's '10' would go.I was quite a late starter in the field, and it was clearly quite a nice evening for a '10'. The starting stretch was OK, I avoided overcooking it at the start. Sadly, once I turned left up the DC drag, things went a bit pear-shaped. I clipped the edge of a large pothole (the whole course suffers from too many road defects), which bounced out my bottle, and caused me to run into the grassy verge. I was rather exasperated, at this and decided to get off to retrieve the bottle and check the bike was OK. I noticed that the impact had loosened the ratchet on my left shoe! So, by the time I'd got sorted, given the bike a quick once-over, and tightened up my shoe, I'd lost about a minute and 20 seconds. Despite that, and the fact I was having to get going on an uphill stretch, I decided to complete the course.After my altercation with the pothole, I was acutely aware of the remaining numerous potholes, which I managed to avoid. Also, there were no traffic related holdups! I finished with 24:40, not too shabby given the disastrous ride!

Just a brief report here, drafted a month late. This event was run on a lovely spring afternoon, very warm and dry. A bit breezy, but no too bad. I'd travelled over with James, and we were about an warming up with plenty of time. Sadly, while James pulled off a 49:51 (I think he was 23rd, on a day when the third fastest '25' was recorded), all I could manage was 56:35, probably about a minute slower than I'd have expected. I have no idea why my form dipped so much (but I have some worries on that score). On the day, I just couldn't get comfy on the bike, and couldn't keep a steady effort. And getting slowed up at the turn wasn't a great morale-booster either. Oh well, onwards and upwards. I hope! 

Quite breezy for this morning's time trial on the F15/10. Having "missed out" on the previous weekend's Hardriders event (I marshalled in Woburn Sands), it was good to get the cobwebs blown off. From home it's only a few miles over to the Brogborough course, and about the right distance to make sure the legs are spinning well!Getting down the Brogborough hill was pretty good - not too twitchy as I passed the underpass. I did see one club mate walking back with a puncture near the Marston Moretaine RAB - no such misfortune for me fortunately. The direction of the prevailing breeze was mostly affecting the return leg and as is so common, the last few hundred metres to the line seemed to take an eternity!I finished in 23:11, not too bad, but I had hoped for a quicker ride, I guess.

I had reasonable hopes for this event - it's a nice DC course with a smooth turn at the Cambridge end. I travelled out with Katja, who's start was (as I recall) about 4 minutes after me. It was fairly breezy  on the day. In fact, when I went out to warm up it was obviously going to be quite hard on the return leg.Based in Cambourne, the F2D/10 starts on a minor road, but soon makes a sharp left turn at a roundabout to go down the slip road on the A428 in the Cambridge direction. There was a rather neat tailwind for much of the outbound leg, and it was good riding, with not too much traffic. Until, that is, when an enormous honking startled me just as I entered the slip road for the turn. It quickly became apparent that this was emanating from a correspondingly enormous truck, which came up the sliproad past me, though giving me plenty of space. Worryingly, it was followed by a line of at least 6 cars, and I feared I'd get held up at the turn. The turn is quite fast, with gentle and well-cambered curving turn to a roundabout - when I approached the roundabout, the entire train of traffic was in the left hand Cambridge-bound lane, and I had a clear run through to make my turn.As feared, the stiff headwind on return leg made things a bit difficult! On some of the rises, I was embarrassingly slow. I just grit my teeth and pressed on as best I could. The exit from the DC to finish is often a bit troublesome with traffic at the roundabout - today I had not real issues, and stamped on the pedals to record 22:32, about what I'd expect for the course and conditions. 

This was the first event of the season with a major effort required for placing warning signs.Nathan and I went round placing signs - the whole exercise took rather too long and left me with a bit of a dash to get back for the race itself (thanks to Carol for the lift). Without a proper warmup, I felt pretty sluggish to start with, but pulled through to finish with a 24:01, which I was reasonably pleased with given the time of year and the lack of a warmup. Actually, I ended up in such a rush that I failed to engage the Garmin effectively - missing the start of the race!

The Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up event is usually my first open event of the season, and the first of Team Grumpy's two regular 2-up events in the season (the other being the Duo Normand, of course). In recent years, the event has been run on a course that is half dual carriageway and half lumpy back roads - actually an excellent test of a 2-up team. This year, the organisers used one of the R25/3 variants, including the descent of Neath bank, a hill riders don't have to race back up. Consequently it's a course that delivers consistently fast performances. My view is that it's not so good as a test of 2-up skills, but it does make a change.My preparations for the event were somewhat hampered by a 4 day trip to the USA, followed by a mucoid cold I presumably picked up in my travels, so I didn't really have too much optimism for the event. But at least the cold was pretty mild other than having blocked airways - and who breathes through their nose when racing anyway!The version of the course started in an industrial estate near Rhigos. While we were 'warming up', the forecast rain started. It wasn't particularly cold though. We set off briskly and joined the main road into a relatively gentle headwind, but enough to make us look forward to the descent! Gerry felt the beginnings of his exercise-induced breathing issue at this point, but I think this eased as we began the descent. In the past, Gerry has had alarming moments on this fast descent, albeit in windier conditions, so he's often a bit nervous - not today, though.Once at the bottom, it was a matter of keeping up reasonably frequent changeovers. I think we rode well technically, though an inspection of my Garmin trace indicates our speed tended to fluctuate rather a bit. We did get slowed twice at roundabouts, once in the outbound leg by a car, and then on the return leg by what appeared to be a funfair (!) travelling up the course.We crossed the line in 56:18, I think giving us 27th place. Full results at the CTT website 

After the uncertainty around this event, it went off almost without a hitch and with a sizeable turnout of riders.I rode up to the BikeBus in time to see Tony setting out the signs around the start, and then went out with Bryan to place signs out on the course (at this point, there seemed to be about 5 or 6 riders). Out near Chicheley Hall, we found a car that had rolled off the road. Luckily, there didn't seem to be casualties, but police had been called and there was a copious amount of mud on the road. And the car seemed to be pretty badly bashed up.We returned to the BikeBus to alert riders to this hazard, and discovered well over 30 riders had turned out! At this point Ian Stokes offered to drive down to the scene of the crash to check it was still passable - in fact he remained there while the riders passed through and made sure the road was kept passable for us (when I came through as number 37, most of the mud had been removed).I finished with a modest 25:17. Full results are at the NBRC website.Apart from that, the event went very smoothly. I didn't feel particularly ready to race, what with being off the bike for 5 days for a trip to the USA. On the other hand, I felt pretty comfortable in an aero tuck, and it was good to confirm that the bike was fully functional again after the Blipbox failure of November-December.  

Just a brief update on my last posting about the SRAM eTap Aero kit. I now have a fully functional eTap set up on my main time trial bike, almost two months to the day that I first reported the defective blipbox to the mail order retailer.Since mid-December, I've periodically communicated with the retailer by email (though it's not been obvious who to email) and via Twitter direct messaging. I've also contacted SRAM via Twitter and then email, to try and get a handle on where the problem has been. As far as I can tell, there have been supply chain problems somewhere along the line, though there seem to be some startling communication problems within the retailer.Anyway on Tuesday I received an email telling me the replacement blipbox had been packed and posted for next day delivery. About half an hour later, I received a second email (from an other person at the retailer) saying that the blipbox had been listed as present in a consignment, but that it was missing, so a further delay was to be expected. I replied, querying this information, and got another email saying they'd got it wrong, and the blipbox was indeed out for delivery.And it arrived, first thing the following morning! That evening, I fitted it, paired the gear mechs, and all is now fine with my time trial bike. The whole sorry tale has been a bit of a saga, and I am at least rather pleased it happen out of the main racing season.

I guess I'm really a sucker for  this sort of thing: a miniature toolset that offers a portable torque wrench of 2-8Nm all packed in a quality pouch with a wide range of bits (2, 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6 mm Hex key; T10, T20 and T25 Torx; and a PH2 Philips) and corresponding driver ratchet. A rather blingy tool probably useful as a portable toolkit. After perusing various online emporia, I decided to place the order directly with Silca in Indianapolis.