Road Racing

Last week was the final round of the SWCC summer time-trail series, another combined event with the Sleaford Striders running club. The course was 7.75 miles with a total height gain of 223ft, not a great deal but not bad for flat Lincolnshire. I was a little disappointed with my time of 0:18:04, I know I can go quicker, not quite sure why I was slow.

Fortunately it was good enough to get me third place in the race behind George and James HS, and I even got a little trophy for my efforts. It also gave me just enough points to take second place overall in the league. The Top 10 in the series were as follows:

1	George Thompson	100
2	Andy Howett	96
3	James Hedley- Smith	93
4	Dave Smith	90
5	Richard Hamblin	89
6	Karl Fraser	82
7	Darren Jessop	78
7	Alan Keys	78
9	Dennis Owen	75
10	Dave Ashley	70

I'll get you next year George!

Yesterday was the annual Sleaford to Skegness race, a 37.2mile time-trial with a most un-Lincolnshire like 971ft of climbing in total, we even reached the dizzy heights of 209ft at one point! The descent from here was pretty quick, I passed Russell doing 43mph, but was somewhat surprised when he came passed me 100 yards later, how fast were you going?!

The wind was pretty strong, but not always as helpful as we had hoped, especially in the second half of the race when the route swung round to be more East than North. Total time for me was 1:27:40, which only good enough for 7th place. The race was won, convincing and unsurprisingly, by George Thompson, with a new course record. He had not so much broken the old as smashed it into lots of little bits.

Next up, last round of the BMBS at Newnham Park, south side of Dartmoor on September 24th