On Sunday morning despite the Maidenhead riders (Simon g, Gurpal and Andrew P) best efforts at the WLC 50tt they failed to beat the team 50tt record despite regular support from Linda R who took up marshalling duties.

With WLC events all club members start on consecutive no.  Gurpal lead off and was caught by Andrew after about 2 miles.  By the 1^st turn around 6 miles Simon had also past Gurpal and was slowly catching Andrew.  Simon eventually caught Andrew at the turn on the southern end of the course after about 15miles.  Simon pulled out about a 20m lead coming out of the turn, Andrew tried hard and maintained the gap for about 5 miles,  before dropping back.  The 3 then continued on with the gaps between all 3 growing fairly rapidly.

Around the 38 miles Simon found he had a problem as his rear tyre went flat.  Luckily he was only about 1mile from Gt Missenden so didn’t have to far to walk.  At the time he was likely to finish in around 2:02.xx.  By this time Andrew was struggling but went on to complete the course in 2:06:56.

Back at the HQ, Simon and Andrew were discussing what might have been, when Gurpal was reported as a non-finisher.  A fair while later Gurpal’s DNF was removed and replaced with a time of 2:46.01.  Simon and Andrew then became worried again about Gurpal as it took over 15 mins for him to get back to the HQ despite the distance from finish to HQ being less than ½ mile.

When Gurpal arrived at the HQ he reported that the delay was caused by him going for a short extra spin post finish to free up the legs.  Now prior to the event Gurpal had spotted errors in the course description and had informed the organiser to get these corrected.  Good show Gurpal.  However, he managed to go wrong on the course (or decided 50 miles wasn’t long enough) and crossed the finish line having travelled 54.5 miles.  This most likely account with the confusion around a DNF.

Lets hope they do better at the 100tt next Sunday when they are accompanied by Joe F and Rob B.