A busy bank holiday of organising and racing...

I managed to cram quite a bit into this weekend, with organsing the TA East & Lincoln Wheelers Old Skool event on Saturday and having a bit of a back to back racing for the Sunday & Monday on the V718 both days which is my absolutest favourite course in the whole wide world....

Saturday - V728 - VTTA National 15 Champs
This one was held on an extended remix version of the V718 course which added c.2.5m both ways towards the Newport turn off. There was a howler of a wind blowing from the South Easterly direction at 20mph, and that made both the start and the proceeding 2.5miles to south CAve really tough. I could see my power and could hold it steady and I could also see my minute man, himself a decent rider, edging a little bit closer. In fact he was an excellent carrot and I managed to catch him before the turn, so I knew I had a decent pace going out.

Up and over the turn smoothly, I made sure to be careful as I made my way up the gears for the super quick backwind section. My only problem came as I span out and couldn't spin fast enough to take the power any higher. I was strong and kept moving as quickly as I could and attacked the Welton Drag as hard as I could.  All out, I went for the line and was pleased to be rewarded with a 33.34 in poor conditions - 35th on scatch on the day.

Sunday - V718 - Mike Dixie - Tandem Trike
The super fast tandem trike pairing of myself and 70 year old Pete Holland met up early at the HQ at Newport and set about modifying Pete's tandem so that we could have a comfortable ride and attempt to take the Lincoln Wheelers tandem trike record which stands at 23.45 and has done since 1996.

We don't train on it together, preferring to just race occasionally. On this occasion, we chose the may-day Mike Dixie event that we usually ride solo.

We started well and got a good understanding almost straight away, I'd push on and occasionally Pete would rest and free spin. It worked well and we made good progress against the still windy but better than yesterday 12mph wind. Overall, we needed to maintain an average of 25.35 miles per hour and it was looking good at the turn (bottom of at 23.8mph). the turn was very slow though and it was down to 23 on the way down, but I thought it was still doable.

Riding back was like treacle in parts and I could feel the pedalling get harder as Pete tired in the second half. We did give it our all though and really went to town in the last mile getting up to 38 miles per hour and eventually only missing the record by two seconds !! Grrr !