This event was the North Bucks Road Club's 10 mile championship, and was held in a week when the weather had varied between the dull, wind, damp and the frankly atrocious.  Following Sunday's grovel up and down the F1 in the NM&H '50', I had vague hopes for a reasonable evening, and in fact the weather during the day had not been too bad.  I rode down to the club room in pretty gloomy conditions, with no real enthusiasm for an evening '10'.

In the event, I was one of the later starters, and got a bit clobbered by the rain when it arrived.  I didn't have a clear runf through any of the roundabouts, other than the far turn, and I found the run up to the Stoke Hammond bypass a real struggle.  Coming back from the turn was pretty quick, and I especially noticed the benefits of the tailwind when on the false flat immediately before the finish.  I could tell from the off that I wasn't on a good ride this evening, and as it turned out I was pretty luck to take third place overall.  Still, we saw some excellent performances, notably Tim and Tony, who took first and second places with excellent times on a frankly rather crummy evening for a time trial, and on a not particularly quick course.  Gilbert pipped me again on vet's standard!

No more racing for a couple of weeks - I'm off cycle touring in the Hebrides, which will be a welcome change of pace!

It was clear that this evening's event was going to be quite tough - when I set off from work to Stony Stratford, I roared up Brickhill Street at about 27mph with a stiff tailwind (of course when I went home it was the opposite!).

On the evening, we had a reduced turnout, presumably a combination of the strong wind, and impending summer holidays.  Dealing with my front trispoke in the crosswinds was a problem on the ride our, but at race speed, I had no difficulty.  The climb to the turn was pretty tough into the wind, especially in the approach to Nash, but roaring back down was nice - I reached at least 44.3mph at one point.

At this time each year, we see the launch of the following year's cycling equipment - sometimes (all too rarely in my opinion) a hugely significant technical advance is made.  Shimano's development of STI shifters for road bikes, which seemed to stimulate parallel development at Campagnolo, is one of these cases.  Addition of more gears does not.  For example, cyclingnews.com has an article outlining the changes to Campagnolo's lineup for 2009, with the addition of an 11th cog to the cassette in the top three groupsets, among other things.

I have had absolutely no experience with SRAM equipment, so I have no worthwhile opinions on that.  The kit looks good, has had good reviews, and it is good to see a third player in the field. 

Good innovations

Not the most auspicious way to get to a club event - I returned from London at 7pm, discovered there was no electricity in Aspley Guise (it eventually came back on at 3am the next day),jumped into my skinsuit, pumped up the tyres, and dashed down to the start of the event.  A very windy evening, though sunny and warm, which made handling tricky at times for those of us with aero wheels.

Certainly not the best performance, by a long chalk.

We had a lovely summery spring evening for this event, one of our interclub events between the North Bucks Road Club and the A5 Rangers, and it brought out a field of 32 riders.  There was quite a stiff easterly breeze, which made me rather apprehensive about likely times on this course, which is not exactly a dragstrip!', '

In the event however most, if not all, riders recorded improvements, with some particularly strong rides.  I was pleased to improve by nearly half a minute to 22:56.  The breeze actually helped us up the hill to the DC section and up to the turn.

Tony's official writeup is here.

This was an afternoon event on the hottest day of the year so far, hot enough that I found it rather oppressive. By the finish, my HR had climbed to some pretty unreasonable levels.

The F12/10 runs on the A505 Leighton Buzzard bypass, and while not a dual carriageway it is a pretty wide road.  The surface is a little rough and fractures in places, and the road undulates quite a bit.  The course suffers a bit from being quite exposed to crosswinds, though this wasn't an issue for this event, as it was virtually still.  There have been traffic management changes since I last rode the course, with increased traffic levels through the Grovebury Road industrial estate where the HQ was, and on the section of road where we normally warm up - possibly due to the new Stoke Hammond bypass road.

I rode to and from the event, and I must be on a roll as I had no punctures.  During the race, I quickly dropped into a good rhythm, but after 5 or 10 minutes the heat began to get to me.  I had a clear run through the Billington Road roundabout in both directions and had no trouble at the turn.  I finished with 22:45, which I think was 9th.  Tim Carter and Tony Parks r=finished in 21:27 and 21:50 respectively, giving the North Bucks the team prize.

On the face of it, the riders were presented with an appalling set of conditions - the warm and sunny weather we had for the previous week or two had vanished, replaced by cold and grey conditions, with a very strong wind and the threat of rain.  To add to this, I had a real lack of enthusiasm and couldn't stop yawning as I lined up at the start.

Mind you, having Tony Parks a minute behind me was sure to spur me on.  I nearly got tipped off by the wind catching the front trispoke just after the start, but after that I had no trouble.  As expected the wind assisted me down the main road towards Chicheley, but more astonishingly, it seemed to help most of the way back to North Crawley.  That mystifies me!  Anyway, I was pretty pleased - not only did the rain hold off, but I limited my losses to Tony Park to 30 seconds, which was pretty good given his form lately, but I improved about 11 seconds from three weeks ago.  An encouraging event...next race is the Norlond '50' on the F1/50 on Sunday morning - this will be my first 50 since the 2006 season!

There's a report from Tony over at the NBRC web page.

This was my first '50' since the 2006 season.  When leaving the house for the event, I was fairly optimistic, but upon arriving at Tempsford I realised that the northbound legs would be tough going due to the head wind. Anyway. onward I rode, fuelled by the knowledge that this was the event nominated as the North Bucks '50' championship event - one other NBRC rider had entered.

The start for this version of the F1/50 lies quite close to the Tempsford flyover, so pretty quickly I found mself roaring down the sliproad onto the A1.  As expected, the ride to the first turn, at the Sandy RAB was splendidly quick.  Unfortunately, once I'd rounded the turn and  started on the long leg north, it was apparent just how tough it would be (I don't know what my average was, but I saw 22mph quite a lot).  I grovelled northward, across the Black Cat RAB, to the turn at Buckden, where I caught number 55, a rider  apparently on the comeback trail, and riding a bike with a single speed freewheel and no tribars.  This seemed to spur him on a bit, it took me to the Sandy RAB to shake him off (and even then not by much judging from the final result).  Number 60 caught me for 4 minutes just before crossing the Black Cat RAB - at somewhat less than the halfway mark.  (My split for the first 25 miles was just sub-hour).  The southbound leg was pretty quick, but being the indomitable soul I am, I wasn't too worried about the second northbound leg.  Well, actually it was just as horrible as the first time I headed north!

After a rather chilly ride down to work, I was pleased that the evening was pleasantly warm, albeit with a stiff breeze.  Still experimenting with routes from the OU over to Stony Stratford, on this occasion, I zoomed up V10 and then along H3.  Actually the best route so far, in terms of avoiding the need to use redways and the busier MK roads.

I'm never too keen on the Stony Stratford course, mostly due to the lengthy climb up to Nash, which I usually take in too high a gear.  Tonight was no exception.  The return leg was pretty quick, as I'm happier riding that section in the dry.

The event was the third round of the club league, so I was reasonably happy with my third place (second NBRC rider), though the margin between Tony and me was a bit big for comfort! Interestingly, this event hd more riders than next Sunday's North Middx & Herts CA '50'! 

The omens were not good for this event. As the easter weekend approached, all the weather forecasts were dire - snow, sleet, rain, wind, all were forecast, and all my pooh-poohing could not evade this. We had very strong and gusty wind from Thursday evening. Come Saturday morning, and we had snow showers, and near freezing temperatures to match the gusting gales.

Despite encouragement not to go, I set out to ride up to Astwood for the time trial. It took me considerably longer to get there than usual, due to the perishing head wind. I was encouraged by seeing at least one rider warming up, but when I staggered into Astwood village hall, blinking from the fierce wind, it seemed as though my appearance had galvanised my club mates from a state of indecision into a racing mindset. As I hate racing in tights or legwarmers, I stripped down to a longsleeved skinsuit (albeit with two longsleeved vests underneath it), and warmed by a generous dollop of extra hot waterproof warmup cream nipped out to the start. It has to be said at this point that racing with bare legs seemed to horrify everyone else, but as I found out bare legs were the least of my worries. The full start list was 9 riders (#1, a number reserved for Alan was left vacant due to Iranian new year or some such excuse). As the riders lined up and started, the snow got really heavy - hopefully some pictures will be added to the official results page.

Usually, I ride this hilly time trial - it's a good early season event to get the cobwebs out. This was my second open event of 2008. By Saturday evening, I'd been getting more apprehensive, as the nasty weather of Saturday afternoon (when I had been marshalling the Northampton and District Cycing Association '10') worsened to gales overnight. By Sunday morning the wind had eased considerably.

The event HQ is in Cheddington village hall - I rode out on the time trial bike via the new Stoke Hammond bypass, a nice smooth road, that we used for the NBRC New Year club '10'. This was pretty uneventful, except I punctured near Mentmore. This was a front wheel puncture. As I have acquired a reputation as a frequent puncture victim over the last couple of seasons, so much so that I have reverted to clinchers, I will keep a log of these punctures separately. Anyway, I slung a new tube in and got the tyre up to a ridable pressure using my tiny micro-pump. Once at Cheddington, I borrowed a track pump (I think from the eventual winner), and got the front tyre up to a more reasonable pressure for racing.

Well, this was the first of the 2008 NBRC evening events, and was held on the new F5d/10 course that had ony been used once before, for the New Year's Day '10'. The full report can be read here.

The F5d/10 uses the new Stoke Hammond bypass, a nice new smooth-surfaced dual carriageway. We had an excellent turnout, to the point that we worried about failing light towards the end of the event!

This was the last of the early season Saturday time trials organised by the North Bucks Road Club (the events now shift to Wednesday evenings), and the first of 2008 to be held on the Stony Stratford course F5v/10. In the version used by NBRC, this course is about 11.4 miles and is a sporting course. It's also the furthest of our regular courses from my house, so I set off quite early, shortly after 7.30 am, in bright sunshine.

By the time I reached Stony, the temperature seemed to have dropped (eventually it snowed by Sunday morning), and the reasonably stiff breeze threatened the return leg. It was good to ride this course again - however some of the rougher sections seem to have deteriorated over the winter. In particular, the first sharp lefthander after Beachampton on the return leg has some nasty potholes. In the event,the outward leg was pretty uneventful, other than the line of cars parked juset before the turn (appeared to be parents unloading children for some unknown reason) - slightly worrying with oncoming traffic, and car doors pinging open and shut. All the riders seemed to get by OK. The return was quite a bit tougher than usual, due to the headwind, and I'm always a bit cautious about roaring downhill on slightly twisty roads (call me wimpy if you like, but I prefer to avoid bodily mangling).

In previous years, the organiser of this event (Ian Marshall) has managed to ensure bright, sunny and warm conditions. It was a shame therefore that this year's event was unusually cold and windy. Fortunately the forecast rain held off until after the event. As usual, Team Grumpy (Gerry Oram and myself) entered the 2-up event. This is likely to be the last opportunity for us to practice 2-up riding before the Duo Normand in September.', '

After signing on at the race HQ in the Cranfield University campus, we somewhat reluctantly warmed up, by riding the circuit in the other direction from the race (which had already started). We had been a bit worried by the wind, but we had no problems with the trispokes. Back to the car to remove jerseys and jackets, then off to the start. The version of the course used in this event differs in the start point from the usual course used for the NBRC club events (about half a mile after the Bourne End/Cranfield Road junction), so the climb to Astwood is mid-lap rather than at the end of each lap.

Overall we rode well, though I think we could have organised the changes better - we took turns that were too long (sometimes because it was difficult to change due to traffic). The section from Astwood to Chicheley was seriously with the stiff tail wind. We also had no difficulty with the various climbs on the course, staying in the big ring throughout. In the end, we finished with 47:40 for fourth place.

Well, spring had certainly sprung as I set out for Astwood, and a fine evening prompted an excellent turnout of 30 riders to take part in the latest club time trial held on the Astwood circuit. I've raced there so many times this year that I think I could do it on autopilot!', '

Weather conditions certainly were different from those allocated to Ian Marshall for the Team MK event last weekend - hopefully we'll see some more balmy evenings.
Some excellent performances were seen - particularly a close race for first place between Stuart Tarry and Simon Cannings. Bizarrely claiming to be a newcomer (!), Aaron claimed 3rd place, not far behind those two. The man with the watch (Tony Farmborough) tells me that several NBRC members set personal bests last night - the honours go to the following riders.

Chris Hartley.....................36sec
John Buchanan................. 22sec
Chris Parkes.....................14sec
Alan Lawson......................3sec
Brian Primett......................2sec

Many thanks to Tony and the support crew, and to the 30 riders who turned out to savour the delights of the Astwood circult on the first fine spring evening of 2008. The NBRC are organising the Norlond 10 on Sunday, and road races on Saturday - see the newsflash on the main page. Offers of help and assistance at both those events will be most appreciated by the organisers (Alan Lawson and Gordon Batcock respectively).

UPDATE:

This was the Beds Roads slowest 90 '25', and it was the first solo '25' of my 2008 season. I travelled over to the event with Richard Moule (Bossard Wh), who was riding the medium gear event held immediately prior to the main 90 rider event.

Before we set off, I'd popped out to see what the weather was like, and was pleasantly surprised at how mild it appeared to be: No Frost! However, by the time we got over to Tempsford, where the race HQ was in the village hall, we discovered that over there there had been a hefty frost. I had of course made a decision not to bring fleecy gloves, a decision I was regretting when I met Stuart Tarry in the hall - Stuart was smart and had packed a variety of full fingered gloves, a pair of which I borrowed. Richard was due to start shortly after 7am, with me following at 7:34. I duly made a vague attempt at a warm-up, but felt pretty chilly as I lined up for the start.

The forecast was for rain, but as it turned out, this event was held on a rather lovely spring morning, with a gentle breeze.  The event was organised by the North Bucks Road Club, with the clubroom used as the HQ,  We used the F5d/10, which is the new '10' course based on the Stoke Hammond bypass.

Conditions were fairly similar to those for the recent NBRC club event, and I improved by a measly 3 seconds to record a 23:25.  As far as I recall, the winning time was a long 21 - a fine ride by Jason Gurney (Team MK).  It was good to see a strong turnout from NBRC members.

This is the third event run on the F5d/10 - I reckon it's a pretty tough course, with a lot of climbing (OK the gradients are pretty shallow, but when trying to maintain a reasonable race pace they are quite hard!) to the turn.

Once again, the forecast was not good for a time trial: this time the forecast was accurate! It turned out to be a hard evening on the course, with a headwind up the hill to the turn, and light rain.

Because the event was over at Stony Stratford (F5u/10 - though despite what the code suggests, the course version we use is 11.4 miles), I rode down to work on the Cougar TT bike, then on to the event after work.  By then, there was light rain which eased a little by the time I got to Stony.  On the way, however, I had yet another puncture (while I was evading a traffic jam on Brickhill St by popping briefly onto the redway).  I had no tyre levers, but discovered I could use 50p coins instead! This was the fifth puncture of the 2008 season.

Once again (again), the forecast was for rain, and this time (unlike Wednesday), it turned out to be a pleasant morning for a time trial.  This was only my second solo 25 of the season, and it was held on the F1/25, using the version with turns at the Sandy and Buckden roundabouts.  In past seasons, I've never had a good ride on this course. On the day, it was pretty mlld, and in fact I felt a bit too warm with my arm warmers on.  Once again, I rode the Cougar with the trispoke clinchers - a configuration I'm very happy with.', '

I had quite an early start, at 7.16 (number 31, bizarrely).  The seeding of the field seemed a little odd.  Not that I am disputing being on a 1.  What little wind there was presented a headwind for the southbound legs (i.e. to the Sandy RAB, and from the Buckden RAB to the finish.  This didn't present too much of an obstacle, in contrast to my inability to keep the speed up over the undulations in the course.  I suppose that offers some pointers to how I should modify my training.

My result was a 57:43 (and no punctures in contrast to my clubmate Ian Stokes, who was a DNS due to a puncture before he started).  Out of a full field, I came 32nd...

Riding the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25 mile event in south Wales has become something of a Team Grumpy tradition in recent years. In the past, the event has been held on the fast R23/3 (or variant) course, which features the improbably fast descent of the Neath bank, a hill that you don' have to go up again! Due to roadworks, last year the event was run on the R25/24, an altogether more realistic course - this course was used again this year. In 2007, the weather was astoundingly vile, torrential rain coupled with strong winds.

Team Grumpy entered the event this year with particular enthusiasm, as we plan to ride the Duo Normand again this year, after missing last year's event. Both Gerry and I always look to this event for a glimpse of our form; this year we were particularly keen as Gerry's had a bad neck, and after a winter of diligent training (well, as diligent as my work life allows), I came down with something that resembled winter vomiting virus exactly two weeks before this event.

This year, I received a series of increasingly gloomy emails with dire weather forecasts from Gerry - on the day, however, we drove over to the HQ in quite pleasant though rather windy conditions. We'd requested an early start as we had a lunch reservation at Y Polyn, a rather excellent restaurant we usually go to after the event, so we were the second team to start. The R25/24 course begins by heading down the Neath valley on a dual carriageway (A465). On the day, this made pretty hard riding, as it was into the teeth of the wind. Fortunately, Team Grumpy were working well, taking spells of about 30sec each. While I felt at the time we were riding rather cautiously, in retrospect I'm glad we kept something back for the hilly second half. After the southern turn, we roared back up the dual carriageway to the halfway point, mostly clocking 30mph or more, before heading south again on the B road that runs alongside the main road. This road's considerably more challenging, with many short steep climbs that throw you off your rhythm. Added to which, there were considerable numbers of road-kill toads! Fortunately the overnight rain had mostly drained away, and other than the aforementioned flattened amphibia, there were no pools of standing water (as there were last year).