Yesterday, I travelled over to Coalville for the first attempt at an open time trial in 2015. I had started 2013 with the very same event, so it was nice to go back and start over again in the same place.The course was a different one to the one I rode last time around, and to describe it, I lifted this from time trialling forum which sums the new course up perfectly :
''Very fast first 3 miles, especially the section after the roundabout, although if there's a crosswind it gets very twitchy. Then a horrible ~4 mile mostly up hill grovel, a bit of respite then the short but nasty Bulls Head climb and then a fast mile to the end.''
That was pretty much spot on. Sporting a new all black skin suit and hoping that the turbo sessions would pay off, I went off on my 2015 adventure at 2.52pm and for the first 3 miles the everything seemed to be going well. At 3 miles though, there was a left turn into a climb and that was that for the poor old average speed which plummeted. In fact, my new favourite word is grovel, and that is what it was, a horrible 4/5 mile grovel.
It got a bit faster until I hit a short but painful 8% climb back up to the Griffydam crossroads which to be blunt, I nearly stopped dead at the top, in fact, you could have started me again !!!
The last mile was joyous and fast again, and the previous 6 miles were forgotten. It was good to be back ! 26.24 and 44/69.
