Spent the weekend in the Lakes visiting family and ride another hundred mile time trial on roads I'd never crossed and places I'd never heard of, to be fair I did a middle 1.2 riding the Preston Wheelers '25' a couple of years ago on my road bike (I'd been over Hardknott and Wrynose Pass both ways the day before) along this part of the A6 near Garstang.
It was blowing up a storm the night before as I went out to recce a place to leave the car so I would have another bottle at 60 miles (Fiona wasn't stupid enough to get up at 5 and do the honours - this is after all her patch & she was having none of it!) The second part of the course (covered twice) went out through the Lune Valley along the coast through Preesall to the river Wyre,
To be fair it wasn't a bad morning as I was getting changed in the car by the roadside a farmer his dairy herd marched by and into a nearby field, good thing nothing on my bike is edible. "Mind not to go d'ount Snapewood Lane (to the start) said the 'sign on' man It's full of cow S***" now I know what he was talking about
I only had one person to look out for this morning the scratch man Jose Pinon Shaw of the ProBikeKit team, he was starting 5 minutes behind so simple to keep tabs on.
First bit easy along the A6 but then through pedestrianised Garstang shopping street with cobbles and all manner of traffic calming that I'd never had to negociate in a time trial before. Then a dead turn in the road, such a long time since I'd done one of those (circa 1977 on the old Hampton course I feel or maybe the Bath Road '50')
.jpg)
Lake Windermere Steamer 'The Swan'
Across Cockerhampton Moss a zig zag of dikes and gulley's, not much cover just reeds and bull rushes and cows. First leg on the A588 out to Hambleton not too bad catching my 2 and 4 minute men and up on Jose but only by half a minute, wind behind coming back lovely pick up a bottle and avoid the cow dung back on the A6. New computer is putting me at 2.10 at half way, I've been trying to do a calculated effort similar to the first part of the 12 Hr in two weeks time but I'm still having to try like mad and although the roads are lumpy and slow compared to dual carriageway I should not be going this bad, even if I go the same speed over the second half a 4.20 is way off the radar for my form.
I'm a little put off and the struggle goes out of my effort, you always think of quitting in the second half of a '100' but you struggle with the thought of stopping and that always seems worse than the pain and the struggle to continue. I have a gel, have something to drink and continue. I appear out in front, shopping precinct, dead turn, cow dung. Then the second leg into the wind, its getting up a bit, I'm catching riders all struggling more than me, keep your gears down, keep it at 90rpm it's nothing compared to the 12 Hr in a few weeks, it's all good, every pedal rev will get me to the finish
Around the last turn with 15 miles to go I was level with Jose but it was obvious my calibration on my computer was wrong, it was only 9 miles to the finish which came up at 94 miles in 4.08.27, I had miscalculated my effort, Jose beat me by by 36 seconds (4.07.51)
Not a cow!
No comments:
Post a Comment