Flies and Bikes Blog

Sunshine and showers today...and flipping strong wind!  Intrepid as ever, I set off in good time to ride over to the race HQ in a Scout hut in Leighton Buzzard.  Unfortunately, this ride came to an abrupt halt half a mile from the house, as I suffered a front wheel puncture.  To add insult to injury, a shower passed over as I was replacing the tube!  Since this was the only spare tube I had with me, I returned home, where I pumped it up properly with the track pump and grabbed two new tubes (and, in a fit of paranoia, some preglued patches).

Off once again, with a bit less latitude in timing.  The wind was really rather strong, and was causing a bit of trouble with the front trispoke.  I was quite confident, based on pat experience, that the wheel woudn't prove too much trouble when racing (higher speed and more weight on the front).  Fortuitously, Alan "Tintin" roared by in his big 4x4 and offered me a lift over to the race HQ, an offer that I accepted after about two nanoseconds of thought.

Once at the HQ, I got my number pinned on and popped out to ride up and down in a vague attempt at warming up.  To be honest, the main aim was to establish how bad the wind was going to be - I figured it would be a fast outward leg and a hard slog back again (much as last week's event on the same course).

After the usual repartee concerning my beard, I was off.  Pretty much straight away it was clear that the outward leg wasn't going to be a fast as last week.  And to cap it all, I got stopped by traffic at the Billington roundabout after only a couple of minutes.  The marshal at the RAB gave a sympathetic shrug as I finally made my way through.  The course uses the A505, which skirts Leighton Buzzard and meets the A5 at an elvated roundabout, which forms the turn.  Of course, no road is straight (well, apart from the ones devised by the Romans, like Watling Street), and so the course curved in and out of the tail wind.  This was in contrast to the event last week in which the outward leg wa sreally all tailwind.  This was emphasised by the return leg - mostly head wind, but with one or two sections where I raised the pace to 28mph.  Unfortunately those sections were not only infrequent, but short.

It was with some relief that I crossed the finish line, recoridng 23:34, some 9 seconds slower than last year.  Back to the HQ, where the results indicated that Steve Golla had won with a blistering 20...full results will follow...

I bravely refused a lift home, and set off with a nice tail wind.  Unfortunatelt the heavens opened, and it was a somewhat bedraggled bike rider that parked his TT bike in the garage.  All in all, a bit frustrating to have yet another windy day for a time trial.  It's also my last open time trial before I return from our cycling holiday in mid-June.