Team Grumpy rode the Duo Normand again in 2009 (see this story, and also the Team Grumpy blog and website). Silent Movie is my first effort at editing video footage - in this case recorded from a video camera attached to "Grumpy" Art Vanderlay's tri-bars. Thus, you can periodically see my backside and legs, but "Grumpy" Art doesn't feature much at all. I edited the video using the Linux package kdenlive, and rendered it as a 320x240 pixel flash video. Be warned, this is a 90' video, and if bandwidth issues result, I'll need to unpublish this article. It's also rather boring for those not interested in the Duo Normand! The video seems to play well with Firefox on Linux and WinXP. IE8 on WinXP seems to throw a wobbly about the Flash Player, though after installing Flash Player 10 it worked OK. Haven't tried other browser/OS combinations yet.
This year, we had little expectation of a good performance in the Duo Normand time trial. You can read reports of previous events over at the Team Grumpy web pages and the Team Grumpy Blog, as well as the preview of the race.
One addition this year was that we planned to record a video by strapping a small video camera to the tri-bars - if this can be made into manageable file size, I may post it on the web.
As usual, pressure of work led to frantic packing on the morning of departure. This was followed by the drive to Portsmouth for the Brittany Ferries afternoon sailing to Cherbourg. We arrived with plenty of time to spare (about 1h30!). As was the case last year, we were the last car on, and so first off at Cherbourg.
Team Grumpy approached this year's Duo Normand with the expectation that we'd do less well than in previous years - both riders have had less than stellar seasons. In the event, we did better than we expected, I think, despite being trounced by a seriously strong team riding for BikeRadar.com (Robin Coomber and Jeff Jones), who rode a superb race, taking the category record with 1:15:22.
Two main issues concerned us - firstly, we received emails the day before we set off for France saying that a following car was compusory (we had to drag Carol into this role) and secondly, rumours abounded that the UCI bike regulations would be enforced in all categories. The latter rumour caused us some concern, and a day or so before the event, we made final checks that our bikes complied.
The Duo Normand two-up team time trial is held annually in September on a 54.3km circuit based in the Normandy town of Marigny. from a British time triallist's point of view, it's a spectacular event - not only because of the numbers of spectators, but because of the large numbers of competitors (in many categories from unlicenced to professional) and the virtually closed roads. All the teams can have a following car in case of mechanical problems, though Team Grumpy have never availed themselves of this in the 5 occasions we've ridden it.
This year's Duo Normand time trial will be held on 21st September, and after a year's absence, Team Grumpy (a.k.a. Gerry Oram and me) will be competing again. For a change, we are entered in the Corporate category instead of the Veteran category (we may revert to veteran if we continue to be the sole team in our category!).