Another sunny evening greeted the 19 riders who turned out for this evening ’10′. On the downside, the wind was blowing quite strongly! The event was also the NBRC Championship ’10′, for which the six NBRC riders were eligible.

As expected, the section leading up to the dual carriageway was a little twitchy with a gusty side wind, but once on the dual carriageway, this translated into a wonderfully assisting tailwind – most of us took advantage of this, but the rider in front of me, who was riding a medium fixed gear, seemed to be twiddling away like a demon! The road surface on this very new road has suffered recently, with numerous small but deep potholes having appeared. I contrived to ride through one of these, which didn’t do any damage to the bike or to my ride, but wasn’t very nice! I must learn to steer a bit more accurately.

Of course, it came as no surprise to me that the return leg was really tough, though once off the dual carriageway the going was quite a bit better, albeit with several severe twitches as I passed gaps in the sheltering hedgerows. I finished with 24:09 – not a brilliant time, but quite a bit better than my previous outing on this course when I recorded 24:40! Once again I survived without back pain, so I guess that is past me for the time being.  On the whole, I’m a bit more optimistic about getting my training and racing back on an even keel.

Rather a nice afternoon for a time trial – dry with a gentle breeze – but rather cool. I rode out on the time trial bike, newly equipped with a Hed Jet disc wheel with a Powertap hub. After a week fighting off a cold, I wasn’t really feeling particularly optimistic, particularly given the last few months’ lack of training, but I did hope to knock out a mid 23.

After bizarrely wishing the timekeeper ’good morning‘ (it was 3.32pm!), I left the start line quite briskly. Unfortunately the traffic at the Billington roundabout was busy enough to slow me appreciably – I then had to accelerate back up to a reasonable speed again. Other than this, the outward leg was fairly brisk and I felt pretty good. Unfortunately, I got stopped again by traffic at the turn. Worse than this, at a couple of points in the return leg I completely lost the plot (mentally) and found myself allowing my speed to drop far too much.

After a clear run through the second crossing of the Billington roundabout, I crossed the line with a pretty poor 23:59. Still, it’s my fastest ’10′ of 2013 – maybe things are looking up…

Here’s the Garmin trace, below the fold:
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