A warm muggy afternoon yesterday saw only three MDCC riders competing for the Tony Deadman Trophy for the MDCC '30' mile TT Championship.
At the race HQ in Bentley, riders discussed whether to carry water bottles or not, lesser souls  took water bottles, some took two, the elite riders looked as if they were not carrying any. The first 7 miles out towards Alton was into a slight head wind, then after the turn at Chawton roundabout, good use was made of the slight tail wind to speed back  towards Farnham.

All was going well until Gurpal picked up a puncture in his rear wheel at 14 miles and lost approximately 9 minutes to repair and get going again, having experienced punctures previously on this course during the 100 miles, ironically in much the same place, he came well prepared. The remainder of the race went well, able to put in a good effort to make up lost time.
 

Simon and Joe faired better and each had a good race, though both mentioned it was hard going in a few places in the latter part of the race.

The final results were:

1st. Simon Greenland  1:10:33

2nd Joe Francis  1:11:15

3rd.Gurpal Panesar  1:34:28

They will receive their awards at the Club Dinner in January.

[Thanks to Gurpal for providing this report]

Footnote

On checking back through the records to see if Simon, Joe and Gurpal were close to the MDCC team '30' record [ they weren't], I discovered that the old 1968 record of 3:50:08 was actually broken in 2008 by Joe, Simon and Frank Pressling who recorded 3:37:13.  So a belated congratulations to those three. I have now updated the Club records.