The Race as I Saw It

Last weekend I travelled to Teeside with local rider Nick English (AW Cycles) to compete in this year’s edition of national 10 mile time trial championships. This is quite a trip for a 10 mile event and represents 50 miles of driving per mile raced! Fortunately we were able to break the journey up by staying in Nottingham with a friend of Nick’s on both the way up and way back.

Once we arrived and parked up we had a fairly long wait until our off time, but the atmosphere near the HQ was great as riders competing in the junior and women’s events were already warming up and getting ready for their earlier start.

The conditions were very windy with the prospect of a tough outward leg followed by a fast return leg. The record for the fastest ride on this course is 18:59 and is held by Matt Bottrill, it was clear from the conditions that this record would more than likely remain intact despite the presence of Bradley Wiggins.

My tactics for the race were to push fairly hard on the outward stretch into the headwind and then try to maintain a decent pace on the way back. Once out on the road my legs felt good and I found myself able to push quite hard into the wind, so I decided to capitalise on this by upping the pace. As it turned out, this was not one of my better ideas, as I found myself fading somewhat as I approached the turn. With the benefit of hindsight I should have been a bit more conservative as it turns out that my time to the 5 mile mark of 12 minutes and 24 seconds was the 10^th fastest of the day, which is clearly a bit too ambitious. I would then pay for this error on the way back while trying my best to maintain some speed on the fast return which I done in 9 minutes 13 seconds. This return time turned out to be the 44^th fastest of the day which confirms that I was a little bit too enthusiastic on the way out!

Once finished, I managed to make it back to the start just in time to see Michael Hutchinson and Bradley Wiggins begin their rides.

Back at the HQ once the results were in, I was very pleased to see that I’d finished in 24th place, this is my best placing in a national championships thus far, the previous best being 49^th.

Next stop is the National 25 mile champs in 2 weeks time.

Special thanks to Nick for the lift to the race, that was a lot of driving!

First Results

Pete finished 24th this afternoon  in 21-37 on a hard afternoon with a strong headwind out to the turn. The win was taken by Bradley Wiggins {Sky} in 19-14. Michael Hutchinson was second in 19-55. Well done to Pete for his excellent ride in a top quality event and keeping the Club's name to the forefront of timetrialling.

Pete took two local scalps in Adam Topham {HWCC}  33rd in 21-54 and training partner Nick English {AW Cycles} 38th in 21-58.

I hope to have comment from Pete about the event later in the week.