This event, as well as contributing to the NBRC club time trial league, was also the NBRC Championship ’10’. Accordingly I was pretty keen to ride. I ignored comments from work colleagues that rain was forecast, and rode up to Stagsden without a rain jacket, which turned out to be a bad move.
On the road up to Astwood, a startlingly heavy rain shower came over, so heavy that at times I could barely see where I was going. This had the effect of completely soaking me (and others riding to the event), so I was shaking with cold by the time I signed on. A second shower while we were ‘warming up’ meant most of us were shivering when lined up at the start.
For the first mile or so, my legs just felt cold and heavy but soon I warmed up and felt quite good. The Stagsden course is quite strongly undulating, and after an initial burst of speed, there’s a bit of a drag up to Astwood. From there, speed picks up until the rise to Chicheley. The roads were initially very wet, with some rather large pools of standing water, but dry at the turn. As usual on this course, the return leg was quite a bit quicker. I was unable to judge how well I was going relative to the others, and just put in as much effort as I felt able to.
In the end, I took second place with 23:17, 10 seconds behind Richard Golding, but first NBRC rider. I was really quite pleased with this evening’s ride. Overall, we had a good turnout of NBRC riders on the evening.