Tour of Cambridgeshire TT, 11 Jun 2022

This event has been postponed several times since 2020 due to the pandemic, and then was postponed by another week recently as it clashed with the Jubilee celebrations. Obviously a challenge for the organisers but it did leave the TT with a slightly ‘flat’ feel compared with previous years, as there were a huge number of no shows and many fewer riders than normal. I did still manage to get held up by other riders on two occasions though!

A warm but very windy morning meant a fast time wasn’t on the cards, but my plan was to go out hard into the headwind half and then try and hang on. After the start section through a wiggly set of barriers (being held up by the guy in front that I had already caught) it was out onto the course proper and time to get the power down. This worked for the first mile or so but after that I just couldn’t get the power I wanted. Average power was way down on what I needed it to be and never recovered despite my efforts. I held on as best I could and enjoyed the very fast tailwind back to the finish. My time ended up as 38.45 and 11th, slower than the previous two attempts (37.56 and 37.51), and it’s hard to tell how much of that was the conditions. There were also a lot less qualifiers this year (only the top 6) due to the low turnout, and I wasn’t one of them! Very disappointing..

Tim Phillips