Tour of Cambridgeshire Chrono - World Champs Qualification, 2 Jun 2018

This event was one of my major goals for the season, and having missed out on qualifying last year by about 50 seconds I was determined to do better this time. Inconsistent form and power meter issues meant I still wasn't sure exactly how to target the ride, but had to ride it on feel. At least the weather forecast was suggesting a headwind on the way out, which suits me better.

After all the preparation and planning for the event, the hour before very definitely did not go how I intended. When I got setup onto the turbo in the start hall my power meter stopped working! The time spent trying to sort it out, before deciding to switch to doing a warmup outside, meant there wasn't much time for a proper warm up at all - not ideal.

Finally underway and the ride itself went ok. A bit of traffic in the way in technical sections meant I wasn't able to take my carefully prepared and visualised racing lines in all cases, but at least this time I was doing all the overtaking - no-one came past me during my ride. The tailwind helped with the last section and by squeezing everything out I managed to come in just inside my target/hoped for time of 38 minutes, which was two minutes faster than last year.

The good news is I managed to get inside the qualification cutoff in 13th place (out of 85 riders) in my age group, so mission accomplished!

Tim Phillips

Tim Phillips4 June 2018TT