Hitchin Nomads 10 mile TT, 17 May 2025
From a recent event, by Davey Jones
This is a well-known fast course in the area, with a downhill start giving a nice run into the first mile, then fairly flat for the rest of the course, with only a couple of mini-roundabouts to negotiate. I last rode this course seven years ago, as the first race on my current TT bike, and it remains my single carriageway PB, so I was interested to try it again. My previous ride on the course had been far from perfect – confusion over the power meter reading on the new bike (I thought it was under-reading, but in reality it was the one on my old bike which was OVER-reading) meant that a pacing strategy of ‘out easy, back hard’ ended up being ‘out hard, back ruined’!
After some shenanigans with parking, I collected my number and did my warmup (mostly on rollers), with a longer one than I’ve been doing up to now, with the intention of being nice and ready for an effort I was hoping would be my best yet for the year. I headed for the start and was ready to go.
Heading off down the hill is quite exciting, even with a bit of a headwind slowing you down, and this time I went out harder than planned more due to enthusiasm than anything. After 2 miles my average power was much higher than planned, and I thought to myself ‘this is either going to be brilliant, or terrible’! I eased back a bit on the way to the turn, and hoped I could hold on. I was held up a bit on the turn by another rider, and then a bit on the way back by a car at one of the roundabouts. Into the last couple of miles and my legs were screaming! I was also conscious that the course gets hard again as it starts back up the hill we came down at the start. In hindsight I possibly could have gone a bit harder, as the ‘hard bit’ didn’t really materialise and before I knew it the finish checker board was in sight and it was done.
A time about a minute slower than last time was a little disappointing, but 7 years is a long time (and 11W lower not so bad) so I’m reasonably happy.
Tim Phillips