>Weather

>An epic weekend in all sorts of ways. We travelled to Wales desperately hoping the weather forecasters had got it wrong, if only by an hour or so. They hadn’t. It rained, it colded(?) and it blew.

The R25/3H is a course famous for its downhill start. This is very fast. In the wet and wind it is also a bit scary. At 40+mph I lost courage, grabbed the widest part of the bars and even freewheeled for a bit (freewheeling is a sin, but I wasn’t the only one to do it). The descent and the tailwind made the first 15 miles fast. I was one of the slower riders and still managed 5 mile splits of 11:08, 10:03 and 10:40.

And then I turned and hit the headwind section. It wasn’t a gale, but I just lost momentum. I’m a slow pedaller at the best of times, but I was down to 66rpm for one mile split. Anyway, my last 10 miles took 32:30 and I ended up with a time of 1:4:28. Colin Wallace won the main event in 51:34 – incredibly fast.

It was good to hook up with my old club mates from the Ross club.