Early on Saturday morning (6.45am) Simon turned up at my place on route to take myself and Peter W down to the New Forest to ride a 10tt on P311 organised by the New Forest Cycling club.  The event was an out and back course on the B3347, from Ringwood heading toward Christchurch.  Checking the maps and Google Streetview the course looked pretty flat, but the fastest time was only 21.15 which didn’t quiet stack up.

The 3 of us got ourselves coordinated with the intension of winning the team prize.  However, when the start sheet came through there wasn’t a team prize, but we were still hopeful of being the best team.

On getting down to Ringwood we first drove around the course. This showed the course was slightly rolling the whole time with a number of twists and bends.  Finding the HQ was not a problem, but the exact location of the start and finish remained a mystery.  We were early and the boards weren’t up.  Simon has spoken with the organiser and we all had start times near the end of the field.  During my warm-up I went down the course to the turn to investigate the dustbin lid post holes which were flagged up on the sign-on sheet. These were indeed large and about 4 of them as we had to negotiate a one-way system in the village of Sopley.

The conditions for racing looked near to ideal being warm 14-16deg, with the sun just coming out and a very light southerly wind to help on after the turn.

The racing went pretty much to plan.  I started a little too hard which most likely cost be a few seconds nearer the end.  I also took the cautious approach through Sopley and came off the tribars far to early – never mind.  Better knowledge of the course would have help both myself and Simon as we both under estimated where the finish was and started pushing for the line about 1 mile too early.

So how did we get on?  Peter came 6^th in 22.17, Simon 10 in 23.14 and myself coming 13 in 23.35.  Myself and Simon were satisfied, but Peter felt he under performed.  During the racing a new course record of 20:50 was set by Stephen Whitewick of utag Yamaha.  Stephens team mates also finished 3 & 4, so in terms of any team honours we were soundly beaten into 2^nd place.

On the way home we took a short detour to the coast for a bacon butty.