The weather forecast for the day of this race was annoyingly accurate: light rain and a blustery wind out of the north wind at about 15mph.  Still, this didn't deter me from riding over to Leighton Buzzard for the Bossard Wheelers '10' on the F12/10.  I gave it plenty of time, in case of punctures, and indeed rode along a part of the course to gauge how the wind would affect us during the race.At the HQ, I found I had a fairly long time before my start time.  It turned out that there had been a diesel spill at the Billington roundabout, but that the Highways agency had been along and sprinkled it with gritty salt.  While we weren't very convinced it would do much good, we were grateful that they'd made the effort!  I wasn't keen to go back out and get wet and cold, so held off till about 15 minutes before my start, when I nipped out to warm up briefly before the start.  All quite straightforward.  At the appointed time, I rolled forward, said hello to the start team and mounted the bike.  Unfortunately I had to dismount again rather quickly, to put my chain back on - I must have clipped it with my heel!Once off, I got up to a good speed quite quickly, but as so often happens on this course, came to a near standstill behind queueing traffic at the Billington roundabout.  The difficulty is then getting going again in the monster gear I'm usually rolling along in - this was no exception.  Up to spead again, and the wind seemed particularly blustery, particularly where I passed gaps in the hedgerow.  My computer kept dropping the speed display, and I was occasionally alarmed by how slow I was going.  The last mile before the turn were particularly hard as the course veered slightly into the wind.  At last I found myself riding up to the turn roundabout, and back down onto the course again - at a rather satisfying 32mph.  From here, the return leg was pretty quick, and I even had no traffic problems passing through the Billington roundabout the second time.  In fact, the worst aspect of the return leg was keeping an eye out for the myriad of small potholes that have opened up over the winter!Approaching the finish, I made a last eyeballs out effort to try and get under 23 minutes.  Unfortunately, I was thwarted and finished in 23:02 for tenth place.As usual the Bossard '10' was a well organised and very sociable event, even though organised by what must be one of the smallest clubs in the country.As it turned out, the ride home was a bit frustrating - my legs were a bit tired, and grovelling up the gentle climb towards Woburn was rendered rather tough by the headwind bearing drizzly rain.  I felt the beginnings of hunger knock, and ate the banana I'd conserved for just such a situation.  And I had a front wheel puncture just less than a mile from home.  Quite common round these parts after rain, as the rain tends to wash flints into the road.Here's a Google map of the course.  Results (top 15 places) below the map
View F12/10 8/5/10 in a larger map

Pos	No	Name	Club	Cat	Time	+/-	std	Std Pos
1	50	Steve Golla	Sigma Sport	Sen	21:29
2	15	Mick Hodson	St Ives CC	Vet	21:35	+	03:55	8
3	45	Tim Carter	Team Virgin Active	Vet	21:46	+	04:32	5
4	20	Ross Clarke	Team Milton Keynes	Sen	21:57
5	46	Dave Johnson	VC10	Vet	22:17	+	05:42	1
6	10	Simon Cannings	Team Milton Keynes	Vet	22:29	+	03:01	13
6	35	Mark Cook	Beds Road Club	Vet	22:29	+	03:01	13
8	32	Pete Lawrence	VC10	Sen	22:32
9	40	Robert Fletcher	VC10	Sen	22:42
10	19	Jim Moffatt	Spirit Racing Team	Vet	23:02	+	05:10	3
10	21	Robert Saunders	North Bucks Road Club	Vet	23:02	+	04:31	6
12	36	Gareth Pugh	Cwmcarn Paragon RC	Sen	23:08
13	7	Steve Clarke	Team Milton Keynes	Vet	23:12	+	05:26	2
14	42	James Fox	CC Luton	Sen	23:19
15	27	Geoff Bunyan	Spirit Racing Team	Vet	24:29	+	02:51	15

This evening's event was the third event in the NBRC 2010 time trial league, and the first in the annual series of interclub events with the A5 Rangers.  As it turned out, it was an overcast evening with a light breeze offering a little assistance on the opening leg.As I started, it seemed there was more traffic on the course than on recent events, and indeed ended up getting stalled at the first two roundabouts.  On the first, this was no big deal, as the road surface is so pitted and potholed that I always take it rather gingerly.  Anyway, I was riding with very little data on my Polar computer: since I'm using a Polar GPS sensor to relay speed and distance to the computer, everything depends on the GPS device working properly - tonight I suspect that the battery might have depleted a bit too much.  All I had to go on was my HR reading, but at least that was something to go on!Once on the dual carriageway section, things picked up a bit, and I felt pretty comfortable.  Approaching the turn, I saw Lindz, who had started two minutes before me, and I timed myself to the turn.  As far as I could tell, he was almost exactly two minutes ahead of me.  Redoubling my efforts, I pressed on, rounding the next roundabout and easily avoiding the potholes there.  From there it's downhill, and whacked in a nice big gear.As I crossed the line, I pressed the lap counter - it indicated 23:25, and since I started the timer when my minute man started, this meant I'd finished in 22:25 (or thereabouts pending the official results), this being my best time on this course since we started using it.  It's also my best '10' time for the last three seasons (at least), and a minute faster than I managed last season!  Really rather a fine results for me.

Pos	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Standard	Plus	Pos on standard
1	Tim Carter	Virgin Active	21.14	V44	26.18	5.04	6
2	Tony Parks	NBRC	22.10	V45	26.30	4.20	10
3	Dave Lazenby	A5 Rangers	22.25	V46	26.42	4.17	11
4	Rob Saunders	NBRC	22.27	V50	27.33	5.06	5
5	Dave Glossy	TMK	22.36	S
6	Lindz Barral	i Team CC	22.49	S
7	Geoff Perry	TMK	23.08	V50	27.33	4.25	9
8	David Carrington	TMK	23.27	V44	26.18	2.51	14
9	Darren Haydon	NBRC	23.36	S
10	Ian Stokes	NBRC	23.54	V50	27.33	3.39	12
11	John Buchanan	NBRC/TMK	23.59	V40	25.30	1.31	16
12	Kevin Stokes	TMK	24.00	V47	26.54	2.54	13
13	Rob Chaundy	TMK	24.36	V58	29.20	4.44	7
14	Ian Franklin	A5 Rangers	24.54	V61	30.02	5.08	3
15	Graham Mackie	A5 Rangers	24.56	V48	27.07	2.11	15
16	Tim Carey	A5 Rangers	25.48	V47	26.54	1.06	17
17	Trevor Parrish	A5 Rangers	25.53	V65	31.00	5.07	4
18	Clive Faine	TMK	25.55	V63	30.30	4.35	8
19	Murray Kirton	A5 Rangers	26.00	V69	32.00	6.00	1
20	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	26.11	V67	31.30	5.19	2
21	Alan Lawson	NBRC	26.58	V41	25.42	-1.16	18
22	Tony Brunton	NBRC	29.05	V45	26.30	-2.35	19
23	Liam Barbur	A5 Rangers	31.11	Schoolboy 14

I see more about Valv.(Piti) in Cyclingnews.com (Valverde Accuses UCI And CONI Of Vendetta | Cyclingnews.com).  Perhaps to celebrate his rise to the top of the UCI points table, Alejandro Valverde has accused UCI and CONI of engaging in a vendetta against him, or more accurately exhibiting “an institutional and personal viciousness” against him.  He goes on in time-honoured athlete style to say:

No banned substance has ever been detected in my body and my biological profile is flawless.

Thing is, that's true of many dopers.  Until they got caught.  And the biological passport which would yield a biological profile was only introduced in 2008.  The antics of Dr Fuentes were exposed as the investigation into Operacion Puerto got under way in May 2006, so whey would Valv. (Piti)'s biological profile be affected by any supposed blood doping that occurred prior to Mat 2006?.What the report doesn't do is clarify Valverde's explanation for the match between his DNA profile and that of the blood labelled Valv. (Piti).  Is there a match?  And if so, how come a wider ban hasn't been applied?

One of the three riders named as having suspicious blood parameters is making an unusual defence claim (Rosendo's Blood Readings Due To Haemorrhoids? | Cyclingnews.com). Jesús Rosendo Prado has been suspended by his team, but the claim has now been made that there was an observed increase in oxygen transference between May 19, 2008, and September 27, 2009.Now, despite being a biologist, I'm not really clear what the UCI mean by "increase in oxygen transference", but Rosendo's team have fired back the defence that oddities in reticulocyte (immature red blood cells) and lowered haemoglobin and haematocrit levels were due to haemorrhoids.Blimey, one would have thought that not only would that volume of blood loss be awkward for a cyclist, but you'd expect a performance hit!  Poor bloke, having his troublesome haemorrhoids splashed about the interweb.

Well, what do you know! Dear Valv. (Piti), who's DNA has been found to match blood bags stored by Dr Fuentes of Operacion Puerto fame, is now leading the UCI World Ranking (Valverde Tops UCI World Rankings | Cyclingnews.com), despite suffering a two year ban in Italy as a consequence.  Meanwhile, Jan Ullrich, who's career was terminated after his DNA match must be wondering "what if"...In separate news, Cyclingnews.com also reports three riders that appear to be manipulating their blood, at least on the basis of the "Biological Passport" (UCI names riders snared by Biological Passport).  Apparently the three are Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas-Doimo), Jesus Rosendo Prado (Andalucia-Cajasur) and Tadej Valjavec (Ag2r-La Mondiale, and their teams are not pleased.  Disciplinary proceedings are "requested", but it's not clear what these "disciplinary proceedings" will be.So at least the UCI would appear to be making progress in the battle against doping in cycling, but it does always seem to the three steps forward, two steps back.  I wonder what's going on in other professional sports?

There have been a couple of stories over at Cyclingnews.com on the general theme of doping. In the first, Frei Explains The Motivation Behind His Doping | Cyclingnews.com, BMC's Thomas Frei explains his motivation behind doping with EPO.  He failed an EPO test, and declined to have his B sample tested - admitting guilt, he seemed to be relieved to have the truth out.  In this article, he touches on the motives behind getting involved in doping.  While I appreciate that there is always the possibility that his public statements may to an extent be self-serving, they do seem to me to be quite illuminating.

"Of course I would have gone on doping. The money tempts you, it is the same for everyone," said Frei in an interview with Swiss website NZZ.ch.

As for his slide into doping, this comes across as something straight out of Trainspotting:

As for himself, he said that he started his pro career clean. "Then came the hard stage races, and I learned that infusions were used for recovery. Everything was legal, but I still didn't want any of it. But at some point it started [for me], because everybody does it. The doctor gives you the first shot, and then it isn't long until you give yourself the first illegal shot."He said he took EPO, because "you stand in front of a huge mountain and don't know how to get over it. Your ambition eats you up. After all, you want to become more than just a helper."

The section I find interesting is how the teams work.  While they aren't directly saying to the riders "You must take this to be competitive" (well not since the days of Festina), there does seem to be a tacit acceptance.  Teams never enquire why a rider shows a sudden and dramatic improvement in form, and of course where not only is survival through long hard stage races an issue, but pay and future contracts reflect performance, the temptation to dope will always be present.  Frei finishes with:

"From the bosses you only hear, 'We don't want any doping cases.' But what they really mean is something else."

And this seems to be key. It seems to me that riders are victims as well as culprits complicit in doping. The teams want strong athletes that can deliver performance, and in the face of (probably hard to eradicate) doping practices choose to turn a blind eye in favour of disowning the rider when he's caught.  To my mind the teams end up being complicit.  While there's ostensibly a new anti-doping breed of cycling teams out there, the cynic in me wonders "says who?" - who can we believe in a murky world of black market doping, where investigations get shelved with only partial justice (e.g. Ullrich busted, Valverde still riding while dodging investigations), or cases where justice and retribution are so long coming that an athlete may well retire before punishment.A second story, High profile Italian doping case close | Cyclingnews.com, seems to indicate that a high profile Italian cyclist may be busted before the Giro d'Italia gets going next week.  This follows widespread analysis of blood values - the "biological passport".  So far, five Spanish and Italian riders have been busted for blood value manipulation.It does seem as though the response of the dopers (and one might surmise in the light of major doping rings) the doping industry has been less in the direction of stopping, or trying new products and more in the direction of fine-tuning the doping process with the objective of making detection less likely.  Much of this focusses on what's probably the most effective drug for an endurance athlete, EPO.  Strategies for evading detection have included microdosing (as in the case of Frei), and the use of modified EPO derivatives such as CERA.  CERA, of course, was being pushed as an undetectable form of EPO, a promise happily unfulfilled as the rash of offenders detected over the last few years testifies,

Still pottering around with Mythbuntu!  The PC I've set up as a MythTV PVR using the Mythbuntu distro seems to perform pretty well.  The only problem still to be resolved is that of the Hauppauge IR remote control, but since I discovered the MyMote app for my iPod Touch, this hasn't been too urgent.  I'm pretty confident that I can get that sorted out.At the moment I have this huge desktop PC case sat next to the TV with cables draped around connecting the sound and video outputs to the TV.  Added to this is an annoying blue LED that flickers as the hard disk is accessed and a big blue LED ring around the power button, and it's immediately obvious that I need to see to the appearance of the device.  A further point is that the hard disk makes just enough noise to be irritating in a quiet room.So, searching for an quiet and unobtrusive case has led me to order one of these:This seems pretty plain, with most of the front access sockets and drives hidden by flaps.  I was rather constrained by the components I'm working with - notably the full size ATX motherboard.

This year's cycle tour once again takes us round our favourite haunts: the Scottish west coast Hebridean islands. This year we're planning an itinerary that sees us visit some islands for the first time, and in so doing sees us take seven ferries (eight crossings) in nine days cycling! These are Barra (which we've never visited before), Berneray (only been as far as the ferry jetty before) and Iona (we've never even been as far as Fionnphort on Mull before).
Day 1 Our trip will begin by arriving in Oban by car, in time to catch the 1540 ferry, to arrive in Castlebay on Barra. This is quite a lengthy crossing, not arriving until 2040. We plan to find a B&B for two nights.

Day 2 This day will be spent exploring Barra, and it shouldn't be too taxing, as we can leave most of our kit in the B&B. We hope to visit the linked island of Vatersay to the south and the promontory of Eoligarry to the north. In the past, we've been on ferries that call at Castlebay: usually they are stuffed with birdwatchers.


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Day 3 On the third day, we plan to ride to catch the morning ferry (crossing number 2) from Barra to Eriskay, a small island now attached to South Uist by a causeway, and then on to LochMaddy in North Uist. This route takes us northward through Benbecula, a strangely wet landscape seemingly mostly composed of pools of water!


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Day 4 We're planning on staying two nights on North Uist, probably in Lochmaddy (we have our eye on one particular accommodation, which on our last visit looked to have a rather nice menu), in order to look around in more detail than we've done in previous visits. On one occasion, we stayed over a Sunday (because getting to Harris on a Sunday is pretty much impossible), but unfortunately bad weather in the form of appalling gales prevented us from getting far on that occasion. We're quite keen to have a look at Berneray.

Day 5 From Lochmaddy it's off to Skye, by ferry crossing number three, which should deposit us at Uig in the early afternoon. Probably just enough time to cycle over the Quirang to find a B&B for the night. An alternative might be to travel round the northern tip of Trotternish.

Day 6 We'll be remaining on Skye for another night - aiming to stay in Broadford, with the particular aim of enjoying seafood at Creelers, one of our favourite seafood restaurants.

Day 7 Skye, of course, is less and less of an island, now that the Skye Bridge is there. This has increased the amount of motor traffic and resulted in road "improvements" - we'll cycle down one of these roads to Armadale to catch the ferry to Mallaig on the mainland (ferry crossing number four), from where we hope to reach Salen for the night. We have an idea for accommodation, one whoich specialises in local produce

Day 8 For the eighth day, we plan to ride through Ardnamurchan, though the possibility of diversions to beaches really depend on the weather - last time we were on Ardnamurchan, the weather was unbelievably good. We'll cross from Kilchoan to Tobermory (ferry crossing number five) and stay overnight in or near Tobermory.

Day 9 We have visited Mull on a few occasions, but never got as far as Iona: on day 9 we plan to cycle down to Fionnphort to catch the ferry to Iona and back (ferry crossings six and seven). No idea where we'll stay, but probably try and spot somwhere en route.


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Day 10 The final day of the tour will see us ride from Fionnphort to Craignure, to catch the ferry back to Oban (ferry crossing number eight).

I've high hopes for this tour, it'll be an interesting mix of the (to us) novel and the familiar, of long riding days and short,of road and sea.

I was really looking forward to another excursion on the F1B/25, since I posted a 58:24 at the Beds RCC '25' a couple of weeks ago.  And, indeed, the weather forecasts earlier this week looked promising, with a headwind to the turn, and sunny weather.  Unfortunately as the weekend approached, the forecast worsened.  Last thing yesterday, I checked, and it looked as though seriously heavy rain would abate in time for the event.As it turned out, the overnight weather was appalling - I lay in bed hearing the wind and rain thrashing around the house, and I was dreading the time trial.  I was travelling over to the race HQ in Tempsford with Richard, and at the allotted hour, he turned up - we both looked apprehensively at the rain, but headed over to Tempsford nonetheless.  (I always try to ride an event, after all the poor old marshals have to stick it out).  When we arrived at Tempsford, there were only a few cars, and a bunch of folk hanging about: the event had been cancelled (quite rightly) on safety grounds.  A turbo training session now beckons.This event was the anniversary of the event at which Gareth Evans rider was killed on the F1, and there was a prize in his memory.  Probably quite fitting that the event was cancelled.Back home, I discovered a roof leak.  Something else that'll have to be dealt with.

I've been using the Firefox plug-in Ghostery for some time now to prevent web-tracking scripts, except when there was a buggy release that prevented Firefox from closing down cleanly.  I just upgraded Ubuntu GNU/Linux to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), and as ever, the process was pretty much flawless.  The upgrade brought with it a newer version of Firefox (3.6.3), and when I started it, a few updated plugins were installed, including Ghostery 2.1.It seems however that Ghostery 2.1 might not be playing ball with a couple of websites.  In my work Outlook web access, all links (e.g. to open mail messages) are dead.  And FaceBook gives blank pages (no bad thing, one might think!  Disabling Ghostery brings back functionality to both sites.