St Neots CC TT, 13 Aug 2020

I had the opportunity to ride in the local St Neots CC time trial this week (it’s members and guests by invitation only this year so I was lucky to be invited). I rode it once before, over two years ago, on a chilly night where a missed warm-up and dead legs were the prelude to a dissatisfying ride - I certainly felt like there was unfinished business. I was also up ‘against’ another guest rider, Hayley Simmonds, for the second time within a week!

A decent warmup this time and a quick reminder of the course by car set me up nicely for the ride around the course, which is a challenging 11.2 miles of ups, downs and corners - definitely an art in pacing this one. I felt it did this quite well, giving plenty on an early uphill drag into the wind, then holding back a little in the middle part of the ride enabling me to give maximum effort in the last couple of miles back into the headwind before the finish. Catching a couple of people at unfortunate moments lost me a few seconds, but the boost of going past 5 or 6 people during the ride is always a plus! I finished in 25.26, almost a minute faster than my previous time, which was very pleasing, especially as I got within a few seconds of said National TT champ as well!

Tim Phillips

Library picture