Here's a nice video of John Cale performing Venus in Furs - it's a TV broadcast from 10th January this year. h/t Here Comes The Flood

It seems that December has proceeded pretty much as the whole of the 2013 season has done: appallingly.My training has gone pretty well in fits and starts through the month, and monitoring the Critical Power estimates (obtained by the budget Polar power meter fitted to the turbo bike and analysed by Golden Cheetah) has indicated my training has not been completely ineffective!As I write, I've woken early yet again at the behest of my persistent chesty cough, which is showing no signs of shifting after about 5 days. So my last training was on 22nd December, a day before I left for a brief Christmas break. That turbo session went pretty well, and I was somewhat encouraged. Unfortunately, I've been so ill that it's looking unlikely that I will be able to ride the New Years Day '10'. I have decided to adhere to Team Grumpy's Rule #5:

Team Grumpy Rules

Over the years, Grumpy Bob and 'Grumpy' Art have developed a set of rules.  These are of course intended to be implemented at all times, however exactly.  Originally posted at the Team Grumpy blog.Rule #1. Remember to make your excuses before the race, not after. Otherwise it will just sound pathetic.Rule #2. Don't tinker with your bike the evening before the event. It will break, either then or, worse still, during the event.Rule #3. If all else fails, buy some new bike kit.Rule #4. And if rule #3 fails, new skinsuits are probably a good option.Rule #5. Never train or race with a bad cough - it will destroy your entire season.Rule #6. Tantrums are appropriate if provoked (e.g. by mechanical problems), but try to avoid damage to equipment.Rule #7. Team Grumpy riders are allowed to use whatever equipment they wish (and their wallets permit). However, the official team energy drink is always pop belge.

Frankly, from here things can only get better. Can't they?

Well, this album was really a little out of the ordinary for me. The only other record I have featuring Scott Walker is a Walker Brothers collection of some of their 60s output.I bought this as a flac download  several weeks ago, on its release date, and I've been listening since. I don't actually buy into this godlike genius thing - I think a genius might release more records - but after a few plays of samples via the web, I decided to buy it. And I'm not disappointed, though on the other hand I'm not overwhelmed. The record has an interesting juxtaposition of Walker's voice with a odd array of sounds and aural textures, which on the whole I really like. My reservations are more that I haven't really got to the bottom of the lyrics, and with an album like this, it's difficult to really form an opinion too quickly. Many of the songs seem to be making quirky connections between widely disparate people and events. It's safe to say this one's going to take a bit of concentration.

This is a Rouleur publication (under the Bloomsbury imprint), and in common with that magazine, it's chock full of photographs, printed on high quality paper. In his introduction, Sykes admits he'd always promised that he wouldn't write a biography of Fausto Coppi (there are quite afe of those around). What this book represents is a collection of photographs from Coppi's career, punctuated with interviews with some of Coppi's contemporaries. Sykes' intention is to preserve the memories of these veterans.In this, the books succeeds admirably. It's not a book that provides a detailed biography of Coppi - you have to look elsewhere for that - but for all that it's delightful to read and to savour the often superb photography, with some of the often painful eyewitness testimony.The design of the book is lovely, with excellent reproductions of the photos on heavy paper. Unfortunately the photos are not captioned, so relating them to thw interviews is not always easy. As a nice touch, the text pages are tinted in what appears to a pale Bianchi celeste.Coppi: Inside the legend of the Campionissimo, by Herbie SykesPublished by Rouleur via Bloomsbury Sport £27-ishISBN 1408181665

From Stars to Stalagmites - How everything connectsWorld Scientific 2012 ISBN 13 978 981 4324 97 7Paul S. Braterman*I am a pretty avid reader of popular science books, but generally speaking I've mostly read books with a general emphasis on biology, particularly evolutionary biology. From Stars to Stalagmites is therefore a bit different from my usual reading fare, taking a chemist's view on the world. In essence, the book spends 16 chapters explaining how we know stuff. Stuff ranging from the age of the Earth to how CFCs were incriminated as the cause of the ozone holes. Many of these accounts are told with specific reference to the people who shaped the theories and the science. I don't mean just the scientists - policy-makers and politicians also feature highly - a good example being the chapters on figuring out the cause of the ozone hole and on global warming.I could summarise this book as "a collection of stories about stuff", but that would ignore the central theme that comes across as one read through the book: how we know how natural processes work, and how we can use this understanding to probe the deep history of our planet, figure out how to rescue our planet from anthropogenic destruction and so forth.On reflection some, if not all, of the chapters come across as excellent material for presentations. Whether such has been the origins of the work or not, I do believe that the book itself would have benefited from a bit more in the way of illustration...For me, stand out chapters include the opening chapter on the age of the Earth (Chapter 1), that on Fritz Haber, the First World War and explosives (Chapter 6), and the 14th Chapter on why water is weird. But I guess those preferences reflect my interests; the book is consistently interesting and clearly written.In dealing with the evolution of ideas about the Earth's antiquity, Braterman effectively sets the stage for all the controversies manufactured by the biblical literalists who insist in (mis)interpreting the bible to deduce that the Earth is a mere 6000 years (give or take a little). The chapter takes the reader on a journey in the changing scientific understanding of earth science, which neatly encapsulates the nature of scientific discovery. I think this example illustrates the value of this book. It's not necessarily in its factual content, but in the way rational and thoughtful investigation of the world and its material phenomena can lead to clearer understanding of the world around us. And more than this, several chapters describe how current understanding can and does change as science advances, both in terms of techniques and in the application of knowledge from disparate areas of investigation.To conclude, From Stars to Stalagmites is a valued addition to my bookshelf and a fine example of popular science writing.*Disclosure: Paul Braterman is a BCSE committee member, as am I.[cross-posted from Wonderful Life]

Amazingly, the after-effects* of September's crash has lasted through most of this month (despite managing the Duo Normand about three weeks after the crash). This, together with a brief bout of illness and a trip to Scotland has continued the general derailment of my training.On the bright side, analysis of the metrics collected via my turbo trainer and using the rather excellent Golden Cheetah does seem to indicate some pick-up in form. Hopefully I'll get the ball rolling through December and beyond, with the New Year '10' as an intermediate test of fitness. In all likelihood, the first real race of 2013 will be the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25', which is usually in early March.In the meantime, I've got a clear idea of what training I need to do, which is not to say I have actually been doing it. We have had a couple of decent tandem rides on days when the elements have not been so set against outdoors activity, but apart from that, road riding has largely been confined to commuting to work (by tandem).It's about this time of year that we start thinking about next year's cycling holiday. We have a few ideas for 2013, most of which revolve around either renting a house for the holiday (rather than touring), or visiting Wales as a change from Scotland. Maybe we'll decide before Hogmanay. The timing is a bit more complicated this year due to academic calendar changes at work.* These effects have been rather odd: for two weeks I was mainly in graze healing mode: after this, the pain started! Firstly, a painful shoulder, replaced after the Duo with lower back pain. Since I cleared that away, I've had pain in hip joints, another bout of back pain, twitching leg muscles, calf pain and numbness in the foot. All of this affecting my right side, upon which I made abrupt and painful contact with the tarmac at 26mph. On the bright side, no bones have actually been broken. Indeed I must be heavy boned, as in all the scrapes, crashes and car-collisions I've suffered in my cycling career I have never broken a bone. Touch wood.

Apparently recording a cover album of Nico's classic 1970 album Desertshore was something of an obsession of Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle, Coil, X-TG). Sadly this project was incomplete at the time he died. It was however resurrected by his X-TG colleagues Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter.The result has been an interesting artefact: a two CD release housed in an elegant and understated sleeve, along with a 12 page booklet and a postcard. The first CD consists of the covers of the Desertshore tracks, mostly featuring guest vocalists, including Antony Hegarty, Marc Almond, Blixa Bargeld, as well as Cosey Fanni Tutti. Before listening to this, I was somewhat worried that it might be something of a mismatch of styles: in fact, the individual tracks seem to gel really rather well, and I've found myself listening to the original Nico versions in parallel - enjoying both equally. The second CD is entitled The Final Report. As I understand it, X-TG is (or rather was) the three remaining members of Throbbing Gristle after Genesis P-Orridge left, and this is them signing off after the death of Christpherson. Personally, I find this an appealling set of tracks, but somewhat less marked that those of Desertshore with their characteristic guest vocals.Highly recommended - particularly for the TG and Coil aficionados. I bought my copy from Cargo rather than Amazon, due to the tax evasion situation.

This amended road sign in Scotland has always amused me.[caption id="attachment_2055" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Beware of the elephants!"][/caption]

Along with the website update, I finally got around to sorting out the report of our 2012 Summer Tour (click the Cycling menu item above and select 2012).  I suppose this was almost a Spring tour, as we had to set off quite early due to work commitments. On the other hand, I think this was 9 days of rain-free cycling, and possibly our first tour in which we had no rain. Despite the dates we cycled, we did encounter some midgies - but they weren't really much of an issue.During the nine days, starting and finishing in Oban, we visited Barra, Eriskay, South Uist, Benbecula, North Uist, Harris, Lewis, Skye and Mull. We made nine ferry crossings! Almost every B&B had free WiFi, making this our most connected tour - we took along an iPad to plan routes using Google Maps, to check weather forecasts and on one occasion find out about a road closure. The road closure was suspended because of the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

I bought my first copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico way back in the 1970s, when it was a relatively young thing of around a decade in age. Sadly, though it had the benefits of a gatefold sleeve, it lacked the peelable banana. Since then of course, the already considerable mystique of the Velvet Underground has grown and grown. During the transition from vinyl to CD, I did step up to the 5 CD Peel Slowly and See set, featuring the four 'real' Velvet Underground albums plus a variety of out-takes and demos (most notably the CD of the Ludlow Street demos).[caption id="attachment_2042" align="aligncenter" width="265" caption="The 6 CDs are housed in a large format hardback book"][/caption]So, having not fallen for the 2 CD Deluxe Edition released in 2002, you might think I'd not be that interested in this latest outing for this venerable and influential album. Well, of course I was interested! What were the attractions for me? Mostly the mono version of the album; the Sceptre Studios demos and Factory rehearsal tapes; and of course 2 CDs of the live show recorded in 1966 at the Valleydale Ballroom.CD1 - The album in stereo mix, followed by five alternate takes. Frankly not much needs to be said about this, it's one of the finest albums in my collection. In general, I'd note that the best choice was made on which song versions made the final selection for the album.CD2 - The album in mono mix (this is apparently considered to be the version closest to the sound the band were aiming at), followed by both sides of each of the two singles.CD 3 - Nico's first solo album Chelsea Girl. A bit of an odd choice for inclusion, despite featuring most of the VU on most of the tracks. But, hey, I didn't have this already and despite Nico's unhappiness with the final product, I quite like it - though I prefer other Nico albums.CD 4 - Possibly the main selling point of the set, this CD has the Sceptre Studios sessions, some from tape, some from the Norman Dolph acetate (which famously turned up in a New York flea market). Also on CD 4 are recordings from rehearsals at the Factory. All pretty much of interest in the evolution of the album.CD 5 and 6 comprise the whole of the only 'proper' recording of the Velvet Underground and Nico live. This was at the Valleydale Ballroom, Columbus, Ohio (which still seems to exist 45 years on!). At least parts of this set have circulated in bootleg form over the years. I have rather murky sounding CD of this set (with the two long free-from tracks omitted) entitled Down For You Is Up. I always said that the boot is quite good if you know what the song is before you listen to it! The recordings on these two CDs are definitely not high fidelity, but are definitely better than on the bootleg version.The six CDs are housed in slots in cardboard pages bound at the rear of the lavishly presented hardback book.This is packaging. Fine packaging. Very fine packaging. While I'd seen many of the photos before, many are new to me. The text is not what you'd call lengthy, but it really does set the music and lyrics in the set in their appropriate context.So basically, this is one of the truly great and influential albums from the 1960s. But I guess an expansive (and expensive) set such as this really is for the completist. I cannot believe that someone who doesn't already have a copy of VU&N would even consider this a reasonable purchase!

Normally at this time of year, I write a review of the past season. This year I won't, mostly because my season has been so awful. A combination of the weather, illness, injury, and having trouble fitting training in around my work all contributed to a poor season's racing (in combination with Father Time, it has to be said).I had intended to return from the Duo Normand and get straight into preparations for the 2013 season. By the time I rode the Duo Normand, my scrapes and grazes acquired in the crash on 8th September had pretty much healed up. Unfortunately by then what turned out to be a series of aches and pains had begun. First up was severe shoulder pain, and this was followed by lower back pain, hip joint pain, leg muscle problems and the like, all mostly affecting my right hand side (which had made contact with the road).So, as I write, I've effectively been laid off from cycling (other than a spot of cycle commuting) for the best part of four weeks. Not ideal. I was too crocked to ride the NBRC Hill Climb championship. This is held on the short but steep climb at Bow Brickhill. I am gratified to see that one of my NBRC club mates won the event, though by an excitingly small margin of 0.3 seconds! Personally, I dislike hill climbs - they make me feel unwell! Formally, of course, the final event of the 2012 club event series actually happens in 2013: the New Year '10' on the first of January.The layoff has been pretty useful in the sense that I had the time to follow up on the news coverage of the Armstrong scandal. I had read Tyler Hamilton's book The Secret Race on the Kindle just before heading off to France, so I had some idea of what the USADA dossier would say. But I wasn't prepared for the extent to which USADA savaged Armstrong and colleagues. The fallout has been epic, and I look forward to Bruyneel's appeal hearing to CAS over his sanctions.My bike club, the North Bucks Road Club, has had a bit of a rough year, with declining membership and lower turnouts at our club events. Our recent AGM addressed some of these issues, particularly fired by my revolutionary zeal. This earned me nomination as club Vice Chairman. Or, as I put it, Chairman of Vice. Having ploughed through the USADA report, one might say I am now well-qualified to be Chairman of Vice! But seriously, we do hope to pull the NBRC through the doldrums and capitalise on the upsurge in interest in cycling both locally and nationally. I've begun overhauling the club's website, though at the moment changes are somewhat behind the scenes unless you're a paid-up member of the club. Attendance at our Wednesday club events has been dropping, which probably reflects lower membership but also competition from other clubs' events - particularly those held on the fast Tring course which I think has attracted non-NBRC members particularly.

I was in London on Friday for the latest progress meeting of the SysMIC project. It's a project funded by the BBSRC as a resource for members of its research community: from graduates beginning their career through to established researchers wishing to improve their skills in mathematical and systems biology.Here's the course syllabus. There's also an overview of how SysMIC connects to the BBSRC's new doctoral training programmes (SysMIC briefing for DTP students - Word file).At the moment it's being 'road-tested' by some early adopter PhD students (and by me, the only member of the team with what might be classed as 'rusty' mathematical skills). At the end of our meeting, we wandered over to the computing lab to chat to these students, who all seemed to be engaging really well. It goes live to registered members of the BBSRC research community in January 2013 - the first cohort of students are PhD students in the new Doctoral Training Partnerships.I tend to focus more on the mathematical aspects of SysMIC: partly this reflects applications of this kind of training in the biological sciences, and partly because I perceive a rather changeable definition of 'Systems Biology'. I prefer to think in terms of developing models and using those in a predictive way to design and interpret experiments (my own definition of Systems Biology would be of mathematical modelling that integrates multiple and diverse data sources to model complex systems).I'm working through the material that's been prepared so far, and having fun with MatLab, the mathematics platform we chose for SysMIC, and while I have to say I've yet to move on to anything mathematically serious, I can see how a more mathematical approach could benefit my own research.

A few years ago, I encountered a review of a networked music player that seemed rather useful - the Squeezebox. This was a small unit that connected wirelessly to a computer on the home network (or to a manufacturer-maintained server on the internet) to stream digital music from numerous sources. The Squeezebox itself connects to the HiFi via analogue of digital outputs.  The Squeezebox line of devices had been acquired by Logitech from its original manufacturers, SlimDevices. Over the following years, my Squeezebox system expanded to include a Squeezebox Touch, two Squeezebox Radios, and a number of software players for laptops and iPads, with my my music hosted on a QNAP NAS, running 24:7. You can see the general setup in this diagram (the Touch and Classic connect to the HiFi, while the Radios are standalone players):

The whole system is immensely versatile: I really only scratch the surface. The Logitech Media Server (LMS) offers the facility to add plugins, and over the years many official and third party plugins have been developed. I usually use LMS in preference to the Logitech maintained server MySqueezebox.com, and use it for playing local music files (a mixture of flac and mp3 format) and streaming radio. I scrobble my listening to Last.FM, but I don't subscribe to music streaming services. You can synchronise music between two or more devices, alternatively you can play different music to each device. Like I say very versatile.

There were of course issues with the system. Frankly, had I not some tendency towards geeky-ness, I might have been confused by the system. On the other hand, consumer understanding can't have been helped by continually renaming things - for example the server software changed from SlimServer, to SqueezeServer to Logitech Media Server (and I may have missed some out), and explaining to the customer how the local and internet servers worked must have been a complete pain for support.Fast forward to late August 2012. Having just bought a Squeezebox Touch (as an upgrade to my Squeezebox Classic), I was browsing round the Logitech website, when I noticed a new product, the Logitech UE Smart Radio, which looked remarkably like the Squeezebox Radios I owned. As I continued looking round the Logitech site, I could see all the pages relating to the Squeezebox range disappear, and within a very short time, pretty much all mention of Squeezeboxes had been expunged. I posted to the Squeezebox Radio forum, and you can see there the dismay this news caused.Logitech has indeed pulled out of supplying the best home networked music system that I can see on the market. They've rebranded the Squeezebox Radio, and reduced its functionality (though I have to say this generates an easier consumer experience). Oddly the newly branded UE Smart Radio can't play local music files without an internet connection. And there's nothing in the range that can output to a HiFi. So, all very sad.In the meantime, Logitech are supporting MySqueezebox.com for the foreseeable future, and even when that goes, those of us with functional local servers will continue using their Squeezebox systems.It's just a shame that the Squeezebox lineup has gone.

This morning I received a tweet in my twitter stream from some internet Bingo outfit, from an account that I don't follow. It's not unusual to pick up spammers on Twitter, but this one was a bit unusual - it was labelled as a "promoted tweet". I did a spot of Googling to see what this was all about and found this help page. Here I find that...

• Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers.
• Promoted Tweets are clearly labeled as Promoted when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, Promoted Tweets act just like regular Tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, favorited and more.

Ah! It's a spot of revenue generation by Twitter via Twitter-sanctioned spamming of user accounts. Let's read on...How does Twitter determine which Promoted Tweets to display in a user’s timeline?

• A Promoted Tweet will appear in a user’s timeline only if the Tweet is likely to be interesting and relevant to that user.
• Our platform uses a variety of signals to determine which Promoted Tweets are relevant to users, including what a user chooses to follow, how they interact with a Tweet, what they retweet, and more.

Ah, so Twitter have monitored my twitter stream (I'm not actually that prolific a tweeter, and only follow about 150 accounts) about sceptics, science, cycling, politics and the like, and has determined that I am actually interested in online bingo? How does that work? Maybe it's a scam to get money from the online bingo by promising to tweet to soft marks, but randomly targeting accounts...Reading on...Can users dismiss a Promoted Tweet if they see one in their timeline?

• Users who dislike a Promoted Tweet can simply dismiss it from their timeline with a single click, using the “Dismiss” button that appears as part of the Tweet.

And here's the example - note the Dismiss option...Except... there was no Dismiss option on the Twitter-sanctioned spam I received. I reported it as spam and blocked the account (which was @jackpotjoy, by the way). Unfortunately I didn't keep a screenshot. But here's their website, which certainly gives the impression that it's a bog standard online gambling site seeking to relieve the more foolish among us of  money, under the promise that they might win big [I think that's a fair description of any monetary game of chance!].I realise that at some point Twitter will have to appease their investors and earn some dosh, but really, is springing this on people really going to help?Shame on you, Twitter!

This event is usually the high point in two-up time trialling for many riders, including Team Grumpy, the informal name for the regular 2-up partnership between Gerry and I. We've ridden the event for 9 of the last 10 editions of this event, based in Marigny, Normandy. The course itself is a terrific one, with fast sections, short but tough climbs and equally short but spine-tingling descents all within 54.3km.

The second '10' of the day was the Icknield RC '10', on the Brogborough-based F15/10. By the time Tony and I rode over the to HQ at the Marston Vale Forest Centre, we had lovely warm and sunny conditions, with what promised to be a light head wind back (much lighter than I had had the previous Saturday).I rode from the HQ to the start with Tony and then kept riding to and fro for a bit before getting to the start. After the usual banter with the time keeper, I rode off down the hill, quickly getting into a nice big gear for the opening descent. I had a pretty quick ride out to the turn (maybe averaging over 29 mph), marred slightly by traffic at the roundabout half way to the turn. But then again, that roundabout has an annoying kink that I always slow a little for.After the turn, I settled into trying find a rhythm that I was comfortable with (not comfortable in!). I was tooling along at around 25-26mph when I saw a couple of children ahead of me, wobbling along the road on what appeared to be bmx bike and one of those stupid scooters. They wobbled particularly as the rider ahead of me passed, so I thought nothing of it when the looked back at me and wobbled some more. To my horror, this turned out not to be a wobble at all - the kids veered straight across the road, colliding with me and projecting me across the road as a 26 mph tangled mass of carbon and shredded lycra and flesh, right into the path of an oncoming car.Fortunately the car stopped in time. The adults in the car got out to see if I was OK (the kids responsible for my crash seemed relatively unhurt, but somewhat shocked). I didn't have the heart to bawl them out - asking them just what they thought they were doing seemed to have a bit of an effect on them. I was clearly bleeding, with a shredded skinsuit and fractured helmet. The bike seemed reasonably OK, though the handlebars were out of alignment.I rode back to the HQ somewhat gingerly, where, after, retelling the incident to the organiser and others, I was prevailed upon not to ride home and to accept a lift home. The butchers bill is really just an astonishing array of grazes, scrapes, cuts and bruises. No broken bones, fortunately. It's all rather painful - I don't understand how professional riders can go on day after day after crashes. Maybe being younger and being paid to do it helps!

This was to be the first of two ten mile time trials today, and was actually the last in the NBRC series of club events. It was a delightful morning, still and cool with the prospect of fine sunny conditions later.Not a huge turnout, maybe due to the 8 am start, and even despite the early hour traffic was building up. I made as much of an effort as I thought wise, given the afternoon's open event and I was frankly disappointed by my ride (it's a long time since I came last in a club event). I did get stopped at the first roundabout, but that doesn't explain away more than a few seconds.Maybe it's the "end of season" feeling, but I do have to keep enough enthusiasm to take me to the Duo Normand at the end of September.

A very warm afternoon made me feel quite sleepy. Not only that, while I was riding around before the start, I really felt I ought to be sat in a beer garden sipping Leffe. This wasn't helped by the fact the race HQ was in a social club bar. It may have been soporifically warm, but it was quite clear that this wasn't going to be an easy race: there was going to be a stiff tailwind for the outbound leg, which would make the return leg rather tough. Fortunately, the return leg is shorter!The F15/10 is quite a new course which has been used extensively this season (I've entered another event on it next weekend). It starts at the top of Brogborough hill, which riders zoom down safe in the knowledge they won't have to race back up it again! This got me off to a fast start, and even having reached the bottom of the hill, I was cranking out speeds in excess of 30mph for most of the way to the turn. The roundabout at Marston is a bit of a brute on the outward leg because, despite the fact that riders are going straight on, it presents an unexpected chicane. Once at the turn, it was really obvious (I mean REALLY obvious) how tough the return leg was going be. This was definitely a race of two halves. For the first half, I was whizzing along at a decent heart rate with the wind assistance, for the second half I put a huge effort in, with my heart rate skyrocketing, and only making a modest speed, despite the effort. Oddly, my speed fluctuated quite a bit, presumably due the varying shelter from the wind coupled with minor undulations in the road.It was with a huge sense of relief that I made it to the finish line. 22:55, which I thought not bad given the conditions. It was also around the other riders on a '5'.

The weather was forecast to be pretty dreadful for this morning's event, but it turned out to be not too bad. The roads were wet from heavy overnight rain, but except for a few drops on the ride home, the weather remained dry. A light breeze hampered high speed on the outward leg to Chicheley, though it was then easy enough up to the climb to North Crawley. As usual, I found it hard to get back up to speed riding through North Crawley and beyond, but once past the university turn I was rolling well again.I finished in 23:42, my quickest ride at Astwood this year, and good enough for 4th place out of 9 riders. Results over at the NBRC site.

A bit late reporting on this event, but suffice to say that it was all a bit grim. Right from the start, I found the wind very strong and blustery, to the point where I was having trouble controlling the front H3, which was being surprisingly twitchy.  I also got stalled to a standstill by traffic on two outbound roundabouts, which kind of sapped my interest in the event.As it turned out I got caught by Tony just short of the turn, but limited further losses until we left the DC.  Not a great performance, 23:53 for 5th place.