New Year's Day '10'

Grumpy Bob rode his club's New Year's Day '10' and won the trophy.  Not quite so impressive when you realise there were only eight riders, and Grumpy Bob may well have been the only member of his club riding...still, his second place with 24:21 was a bit faster than last year.
Grumpy Bob found riding the TT bike for the first time since the Duo Normand (has anyone mentioned the Duo Normand?) rather challenging, not least because his newly acquired belly made it uncomfortable to maintain an aero position.
Something will have to be done...

Aaaagh! NYD '10' - 25:22!

The omens weren't good for this event, the New Year's Day '10', as you can deduce from my previous post alluding to loss of form ( see Team Grumpy rule #1). The event was held on the F5d/10 Stoke Hammond bypass course, on a cold and dank morning that was just trying to snow (it was barely above freezing).

As usual, I rode down to the club room, where we were meeting and signing on. Just before I was due to start, I decided against removing my outer thermal layers. This was all to the good, I think. At the appointed moment, off I went, assisted up the opening leg by the gentle east breeze. It really was bitterly cold, however, and it was really quite difficult to get the effort out of my legs! In any event, I made it round the course, albeit in a depressingly slow time of 25:22.

You can see from the HRM trace above that at least (a) I tried hard, and (b) it was a strong level 3 session! (The black line is heart rate, blue is speed and green is altitude). I have the worrying prospect of two months hard effort to get back into shape for the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25 on March 1st, which is Team Grumpy's first outing in 2009.

One other thing, no mechanical problems (I obeyed Team Grumpy rule #2). On the other hand, i spent the rest of the day coughing like a 50-a-day Woodbine man.

Results to come...