Stoke Hammond '10' 10/7/24

The 'summer' weather so far has been pretty poor and July has been quite coold and frequently showery. For this evening's club time trial, we had reasonably warm conditions, but rather windy. This was really obvious on the more exposed sections of the course.

But to backtrack slightly. After the equipment debacles of last week's Astwood event, I'd had a close look at the eTap on my P5 TT bike. It was workign flawlessly, and I really couldn't find any faults. So I'd planned to ride that bike at this evening's TT. By the time I was getting bikes prepped, the wind had got quite gusty and I worried that the 90mm front wheel rim might be a bit of a handful. Accordingly, I decided to ride the P3 with its H3s front and rear.

Of course, the P3 had made that knocking noise last week, and again I hadn't figured that out, let alone sorted that out. The knocking noise was there again, so I turned back down the street. I noticed that the knocking was faster at higher speeds - the conclusion was this was a front wheel problem. Replacing the front wheel with my backup H3 completely sorted the noise issue, so off I went to the time trial. 

As expected, the evening was a tough one due to the wind (20mph plus gusts). At first I found the aero extensions a bit difficult but soon got used to the twitchy steering. Up on the dual carriageway there was quite a bit of motor traffic (a diversion was in place from nearby roadworks) and in combination with the blustery wind this meant I had a bit of difficulty holding the effort up.

Despite the higher than usual traffic levels I negotiated each roundabout efficiently and safely, but finished with 24:19 for second place of the four starters. Our sixth rider had arrived after I started with just enough time to get a number pinned on and went on to record 22:28. That was a fine ride given the conditions!

The 'backup H3' is the wheel where the alloy rim became unbonded from the carbon wheel structure. I had this repaired by Carbon Cycle Solutions last year. Perhaps the other front H3 is suffering the same issue? I did come across an internet posting stating that the lifetime of that adhesive is around 15 years (I think, but don't know for sure, that his came from Hed). Definitely this needs a careful inspection, which I'll do over the next few days.