Mountain 25 and cancelled 10 (22nd May)

spot where I keep the pies

Last Thursday’s event was cancelled due to traffic light at Marcle. Very annoying for those that turned up having not seen the forum.  Rule of thumb; just have a quick check of forum prior to leaving home. On the positive side I led a chain gang out consisting of just Paul Middleton and meeee. This turn out to be a 16 mile 2 up on my wheel which Paul M seemed to be buzzing about afterwards.

The Sunday before was the Cross Ash Mountain 25, which had only 3 riders. Of the 3 riders 2 were Ross, both with a hand on the Mountain 25 cup. Bill, Dennis Will & Sammie all turned up for duty to watch the pained expressions on the riders face at various points of the course. 

The sun was out (Jerry, rode through the event, wishing he’d read the race prog) the air pleasant with a stiff headwind out to Aber. I decided to make the numbers up, even though I’d not been well all week. 

Just to make things a little more interesting, we varied to time gap between the riders. Strange thing was, all 4 of us were all on the mile section through the golf course at the same time. Would have put money against that happening.

Tom “The Power” Knight led out coming home in 1:34:03. Mental prep was wrong as we had the phone call 9:30 asking what time the start was. This was almost 2 minutes faster than last year, so an improvement for Tom.

Wobbly Bob was feeling up beat on the Thursday, rode over for a warm up, and also improved on last year’s ride by 1 minute and a half, which in turn was an improvement from the year before that.

Number 1 Forest rider Alan "The Terminator" Matthews, not forgetting it’s probably the hardest 25.3 mile event in the country looked dangerously fast. I felt he’d kept his ammo under a bushel and was going to annihilate everyone on the day. As it was he had a cracking ride. He had me worried I thought he was going to be hounding me all the way back on the hills having passed him on the first big drop to see him right behind as I went from48mph to 4 in 3 seconds up the next bank.

I was more than surprised by my own ride -  that power to weight improvement over the winter may have made the difference as I managed a pb for the course

Thanks all that turned up, I gave me the rider of the day by the way.

This week’s event is a 7:30 start, course clear

1	Paul Stephens	1:15:13
2	Alan Matthews	1:18:42	RDFCC
3	Robin Hill	1:25:03
4	Tom Knight	1:34:03