by PhilBixby
Sun Jun 16, 2013 4:34 pm
Down to the Tom Simpson Memorial vets race at his hometown of Harworth. Sadly road layout changes have scuppered the original and pretty good long circuit, and the start sheet showed a rather odd figure-of-eight arrangement with traffic management linking two shorter regularly-used circuits and shortened race distances. In the event even this was too problematic and we used the short-ish circuit south of Harworth, with the distances further reduced to try to stop the race eating its own tail. Even at between 30-40 miles the 40-49's caught the over-60's, leading to a messy finish, and the 50-59's caught them just afterwards, when they nearly wiped a few of us out by peeling off across a junction on their way back to HQ.
The C/D (50-59) race was a strange thing - a sort of extended phoney war where everyone kept expecting something to happen, but it didn't. The wind direction and short lap made it very hard to get away, and the few attempts were quickly neutralised, until a small group slipped off with a couple of laps to go and no response. (I can't grumble since I didn't have a go, but with a race stuffed with big hitters you kind of expect to be responding rather than making the first move). The uphill sprint was safe enough anyway, although envelopes with tenners don't extend down to twentieth! Neatly:- 24.8mph and 248W.
The C/D (50-59) race was a strange thing - a sort of extended phoney war where everyone kept expecting something to happen, but it didn't. The wind direction and short lap made it very hard to get away, and the few attempts were quickly neutralised, until a small group slipped off with a couple of laps to go and no response. (I can't grumble since I didn't have a go, but with a race stuffed with big hitters you kind of expect to be responding rather than making the first move). The uphill sprint was safe enough anyway, although envelopes with tenners don't extend down to twentieth! Neatly:- 24.8mph and 248W.