The previous posting describes my recent ride in the Norlond Combine 50 mile time trial on the F1/50. To summarise: I felt ill throughout, and had a really rotten race!  Here's a brief clip showing me shortly before the finish.  The comment about '400 Watts' is a running joke in Team Grumpy (see for example this blog article).Norlond '50' 15-May-11

As last year, this event was nominated by my club as it's 50 mile championship event, which was an added impetus to my participation.  On the morning, however, I felt distinctly unwell.  Perhaps this situation had something to do with a couple of days of hosting family, with attendant over-eating, but it really wasn't ideal for a race.  Because the organiser was in my club, he'd done the traditional thing and put a member of the organising club off first (#9) - this also meant I'd be back and able to help with the results board.Anyway, at the appointed start time, there I was at the line.  It was very cold - probably only a few degrees over freezing.  I negotiated the dreadful road surface on the sliproad roundabout and descended the slip onto the dual carriageway.  There was a particularly nagging side wind, which promised to make the race rather hard in both directions.  By the time I rounded the first turn at the Sandy roundabout, it was pretty clear this wasn't to be an event in which I would bang out a decent performance.  In fact I was feeling as though my stomach was going to empty at any point, and during the race occasionally had to com off the tri bars to avoid being sick (which wouldn't have been good for the bike, I guess).  Along with this, I had horribly weak feeling legs and couldn't raise my heart rate to its usual racing level.[caption id="attachment_1464" align="alignright" width="152" caption="Heading north on the F1/50"][/caption]As I came past Tempsford Carol and my father were there to give an encouraging shout (and take a photo -see right).  Actually, I was probably looking better that I felt as at that point the road's quite sheltered and pretty level.  Unfortunately I knew what was up - by the time I reached the Black Cat roundabout, I reckoned I'd not get below 2 hours.  But I persuaded myself to keep on going.One factor working against me was the lack of riders ahead of me to catch.  It was pretty solitary for the first lap - no-one passed me, and there (of course) was no-one to catch.  As I passed the slip road at the start for my second lap, I did start seeing riders on their first lap (and did actually catch one or to of them) - but of course the counter to this was that some of the faster guys came past me!Eventually I made it to the finish, and rolled back to the HQ.  I got changed and went over to the HQ where I assisted with the results board.  There were some cracking rides - notably Ian Cammish (1:45:23) and Jason Gurney (1:48:06).  I ended up in 33rd place with 2:02:08 - almost 17 minutes slower than Cammish!Click Continue Reading for results and ride detailsResults (to 33rd place)

At least the forecast showers held off for this evening's time trial, though blustery wind remained to try my patience.  A good turnout of about 19 riders produced some fine rides, with a bit of a gulf between Tim and Jason and the 3rd and 4th placed riders with a tightly fought 1 second difference.From my perspective, I've been trying to pull back form lost through February's injury: at last week's event I was about half a minute shy of that event in 2010, tonight I was 4 seconds slower than in 2010.  On the other hand the margin between Tony and me was somewhat smaller, around 5 seconds.  By and large, though, I'm reasonably pleased with this evening's ride.The wind meant the outward leg to Chicheley was a little tough, but once round that corner, things were a bit brisker, and I managed to catch one or two riders.  Traffic was pretty light this evening, which is always good!Read on for the results table and map

Well, all the weather forecasts for this morning were diabolical - heavy rain and strong southerly winds were forecast.  I'd decided that there was no way I was going to race on a major dual carriageway in heavy rain, so I was more than a little apprehensive.  In the end, the BBC changed their forecast to sunny spells (and they got it wrong - we had a little light rain, but it was pretty heavily overcast).  What they did get right was the stiff breeze, which promised to make the southbound legs really quite tough.The event was on the F1/30 (my first ever 30 mile time trial): starting near Tempsford, riders head south, joining the A1, crossing the Sandy roundabout to turn at Biggleswade North (Warden Lane) roundabout, heading north across Sandy and Black Cat roundabouts to turn at Buckden for the final 10 mile southbound leg to finish near Tempsford.  There's a map of the course, with some heart rate and speed data at the end of this report.As I got started, I was appalled at the state of the miniroundabout that takes the riders onto the sliproad to join the A1 - successive harsh winters coupled with an evodent unwillingness to repair damage has left it in appallingly pitted and potholed condition.  Indeed one to the riders I talked to at the start said that he'd punctured in the potholes at the Beds Road CC '25' a few weeks ago.  This was good to know, and I took the roundabout  very carefully.  On joining the main dual carriageway, I was already regretting having done the '10' on the preceding afternoon.  Slogging into the headwind was really quite miserable and mostly I was only holding 23mph or so.  Of course, once round the Biggleswade North roundabout, things looked up considerably and, benefitting from a helpful tailwind, I must have averaged over 29mph to the Buckden turn.Returning to the finish was a 10 mile slog into the headwind, a section in which I really lost the will to race.  Bizarrely, there were stretches which were presumably quite well sheltered, where I saw my speed creep up, but on the whole I was knocking out 23-24mph.  I passed the 25 mile point in about 57:52, and eventually finished in 1:10:43.This being my first 30 mile time trial, I suppose this represents a personal best.  I'd have been happier had it been in more comfortable conditions though!

After the NBRC club time trial on Wednesday, when I felt my form was beginning to return, I was rather looking to this event to reaffirm this judgement.  By Friday, however, I was rather annoyed to see the weather forecast for Saturday afternoon was for heavy rain.  On the day, however, the rain didn't materialise (rather, the BBC had changed their story, now forecasting it for first thing Sunday morning - just when I was supposed to be riding the Norlond '30' on the F1).  So, as I lined up at the start it was dry, though rather warm and humid.  I felt really quite sleepy!  The main climatic obstacle was the rather strong and blustery cross-wind that looked as though it might be most troublesome on the outward leg.And so it proved.  It felt as though I was riding through treacle for the first half of the event.  For the first time when riding this course, I had no problems of being baulked by traffic at any point.  Instead, I was just finding it quite difficult to build up and maintain speed.  The return leg was marginally better, but really only marginally.I crossed the line in about 23:07 - not far different from my time of 23:02 in last year's event.  Perhaps the form I had last year is returning after my injury setbacks of February.  As usual, this was a very sociable event - plenty of conversation.  Maybe it's because a relatively early event in the calendar, and usually with modest number of riders.  Anyway, it was good to touch base with riders I'd not seen since last season.

This was a beautifully sunny evening for a time trial - good visibility, and it brought out a rather larger field I think than in recent events.  Unfortunately a stiff breeze rather meant it was tough going in some parts of the course, and brought a distinct chill.I was, as usual apprehensive at the start - coming straight from work without anything to eat always seems to leave butterflies flapping in my stomach (not actually nerves, I hasten to add - this was after all a club event), but I'd strained my back again earlier this week.  Fortunately, it didn't seem to give me any grief while on the bike.Once started, I certainly didn't seem to fly up the gentle climb to the main DC section of the course as I'd felt on our last outing on this course - perhaps the cross-wind I felt was denting my speed a bit.  And things got a bit stickier on the main dual carriageway section of the course, where the wind was nagging at my front wheel a bit - particularly noticeable when I passed lower areas of the verge, and gusts caught me.  I was closing in on my minute man at the turn - I entered the roundabout pretty much as he was leaving it.  But the return leg seemed to give him a new lease of life, and it took  a long time to close the gap.  Because he had a rear-facing video camera, he should get some tedious shots of my gurning gob at that time.From there, the return to the finish was it's usual mixed bag - quite quick on the descent sections, but the final stretch between the last roundabout and the finish line was, as ever, hard going  Still, I finished in a long 22 (I think), which is about 30 sec slower than my best ever on this course, and I didn't regard it as a particularly quick evening.After the results, there's the map of the event and if you're particularly interested, you can see more telemetry by clicking link.Results

This was a glorious evening for a time trial: clear, sunny and warm with a light breeze.  The ride up to Astwood from work was really quite pleasant, and I lined up to start with a rare bit of enthusiasm (usually, I'm a bit shattered from a dash from a hectic day at work but today hadn't been too bad).However, from my perspective, there's not much to report.  I set off in good style and felt like I was going well, only to suffer a front wheel puncture just before the Chicheley turn.  I had enough air left to get me most of the way back but for the last mile I was just bumping along. The event was won (I think - results haven't been sent in yet) by Chris Dunwoodie with a long 22, with Tony Parks a few seconds back.  Also worth a mention is Lindz's hird place in 23:12 (or thereabouts).  And many thanks to the start crew: Tony, Steph and Dick.Fortunately I could cadge a lift home, otherwise by the time I'd have got everything sorted, it would have been quite gloomy.  Like me.

I've been playing around with the beta version of the upcoming Ubuntu Linux. 11.04 (Natty Narwhal).  What's of interest to me is the much talked about (and quite controversial) change to the default Gnome desktop introduced in this release.  Canonical have decided to include the Unity desktop as default - Unity is, as I understand it, a shell operating on top of Gnome, and it was originally developed for use on netbooks, intended to make best use of the limited screen size on such devices.  Having played with it for about a fortnight, I've decided to return to my old Gnome desktop setup.What I used to use:I have for some time used a tweaked Gnome desktop in which a single Gnome panel at the top of the screen hold some frequently used applets (importantly, a workspace switcher is there).  Also there are three menus Applications, Places and System.  This provides really quick access to all the installed applications and system settings.  I use Docky to provide a set of icons for the most frequently used applications: this sits at the bottom edge of the screen and autohides.  I have four workspaces, accessed quickly from the workspace switcher on the Gnome panel(which also indicates which workspaces applications are on.My experience with Unity:Unity provides a Mac-like task bar at the top of the screen, though I believe rather better used than the Mac version in some respects.  There are no menu links there (other than app menus when apps are maximised), nor is there a workspace switcher.  The most obvious object on the screen is a vertical taskbar on the left of the screen.  Obviously on a small screen (such as the notebook I'm running this on has), there is a limit to how many icons can be displayed: Unity copes with this with a neat stacking effect.  Unfortunately, on my notebook, this doesn't work too effectively, so for ease of use, you can only quickly access the top eight or so icons.  And to start up other less frequently used icons, is really annoyingly involved (as is adding applications to the taskbar).So, for the time being, I've decided to revert to what seems to be known as 'Ubuntu Classic' - in other words, the Gnome desktop.  I'll keep an eye on Unity and periodically try it out.  But based on my current experience, I'll wait for further development before switching more permanently.  (I also periodically try out KDE, but generally don't like it, either).

This event features fairly regularly on my annual race calendar.  It's always good to do open events on one of the most-used courses in our club event calendar.  This year Gerry and I entered to two-up section of the event.  As it turned out, there was a relatively small turnout for the solo event (30 riders), and only three 2-up teams.  As may have been surmised from recent event reports here and on the Team Grumpy blog, the early season events have been a bit of a struggle for both of us as we fight injury and illness, compounded by demands of work.  Still those are the breaks, I guess, but nonetheless, sets the background for our early season race performance.Unlike the North Bucks club events, the start for this version of the course is between Cranfield and Bourne End, but otherwise the course follows that described here.  Team MK's version of the course also means that the finish is not at the top of the climb into Astwood, which changes how I at least ride that climb.The organiser seems to have a magic touch in arranging weather for this event.  This year, I was a bit disappointed as clear skies gave way to dark clouds.  However, by time we rolled up to the start line as the first 2-up team to start, the clouds had begun to break, letting the sun through.  Unfortunately the performance of Team Grumpy was not as stellar as in previous seasons.  I had neglected to pack my bike computer and so was riding blind to speed, time and heart rate.  As it happened, this was rather good - at least in the context of a 2-up time trial, as I could focus on team riding without worrying about our speed.At the start line there was a single pusher-off, which meant that I would have to clip in once Gerry had started.  Of course, this then led to the usual situation of Gerry pausing to look back, while I need to avoid careering into his back wheel!  Anyway, we started reasonably efficiently, then dropped into a good style of changeovers.  We climbed to Astwood, negotiated the potholes and bumps and joined the A422 where we proceeded at a decent pace towards Chicheley.Here the problems started.We could see a solo rider ahead, and we were gaining quite rapidly.  Gerry was leading, and we were due a changeover.  Unfortunately as we started the climb to Chicheley, it became clear the solo guy wasn't giving up without a fight.  Eventually, we managed to execute the changeover, and I led us up the climb.  By this time Gerry had been dipping into the red, and as I got to the top, I could hear a strangled shout.  Looking back, Gerry was some way off my wheel.  I eased back to let him back on, but in our race post mortem, he reckoned he never really recovered from that effort (this could be seen in a reversal of our usual roles, where Gerry leads us up climbs with me generally hanging on for grim death).While this represented something of a lapse in Team Grumpy race skills, at least we can say that we altered our strategy to give me longer pulls at the front, rather like we did at last year's Duo Normand.  So how did we fare in the results?  Not too well, I am afraid.  We came third and last in the 2-up section, with a time of 49:51.No course map for this report, as I had no Garmin with me!