On Sunday the 5th September, three members of MDCC took part in the WLC 25 held at Great Miissenden. These Combine events are only open to follow club members and are therefore relaxed and quite informal. As this event was open to both Solo riders and 2-Ups, myself and Mike Woods thought that they would give the 2-Up ago.

Having never competed as a 2-Up,  We had headed to Reading Track the day before, as we were hoping to use this session to help us with our tactics for the race. Unfortunately Mike had not taken his TT bike which meant that any practise would have to wait until the morning of the event. As we had a late start of 8:42 we were able to practise riding in close formation while on the tri-bars. At first this did seem a little daunting but I pushed away any thoughts of crashing out of my mind as we headed to the start line. Just in front of us was fellow club member Gurpal who was wondering how quickly we were going to overtake him. I was wondering the same. I certainly didn't want us to do a slower time then I had done as solo rider. When it was our turn we left the start with the idea that we would change over after every 1 minute. It certainly helped as both mike and I had ridden this course before. We seem to settle into a fairly good pace and the change overs were smooth. We finally caught sight of Gurpal as we head down to the far turn. Taking a quick look down at the computer it said that were going at over 31 mph. As we made our turn around the roundabout we were hit by the stiff wind that had been behind us for the start. We now had 9 to 10 miles into the wind. As we were gaining on Gurpal we noticed a van pulled up on the side of the rode attached to its side and spread across part of the road was an advertising banner. Apparently this banner had come off as Gurpal was making his way up the dual carriageway and it had nearly blown into him. Our speed dropped to 17 mph as we overtook Gurpal and grovelled our way back up the dual carriageway. On heading towards Great Missenden we managed to keep our workload constant and at a rate we were able to maintain. As we moved away from Great Missenden towards Amersham Old Town down the A413 we started to gain on a number of other riders and with the turn insight we could once again look forward to being help by the wind.
With the wind now behind us our speed increased rapidly. We were even able to maintain speeds of  23+mph up the final incline towards the ultimate roundabout south of Wendover. With the last leg now back into the wind Mike took the lead. We were still making our changes every 1 minute. The finishing line was finally spotted and we both put in our last efforts. Back at the HQ we had our time confirmed at 1:05:51. This meant that we had managed to come 6th, and that we had managed to get a better time when riding as a pair. The first placed 2-Up had completed the course in 0:56:49. and their team members were C.Sterling and P. Lawrence.

We waiting for Gurpal to return who was very pleased in lowering his PB for the course to 1:15:37.  The winner rider in the Solo Event was P.Dixon in 0:58:18