Early drizzle soon cleared, and conditions were warm and sunny with only a light breeze to discomfit the 13 riders who turned out for tonight’s event. On the downside, this was one of those ‘flying ant’ days, when all the ant colonies seem to simultaneously produce new queens. I was expecting to spend a lot of the time extracting ants from my eyes during this event, but fortunately, most of them had dispersed by the evening.We had a turnout of 13 riders (plus Steve T., who had a problemmo with his front tub valve and didn’t ride). My biggest problem was that I’d just come back from a week at residential school with the attendant consequence of 7 days with no exercise and a diet of chips and beer. This led me to DNS Sunday’s Finsbury Park ’25′, but really I needed to get the bit between my teeth again. So I rode over to Stony Stratford for this event.

I found the outward leg really quite hard – particularly the climb from Beachampton through Nash. But that’s not too unusual, this isn’t my favourite course for that reason. The return was quite quick as, for a change, the roads were dry and I felt confident enough to belt down the hills, and corner on the tri-bars. I ended up with 27:43 which, because several riders were on road bikes and some fast guys hadn’t showed up, was good enough to win the event.

I did find my pulse rate rather high, seeing 190bpm at one point! Anyway, full results over at the NBRC website. At the moment, my attention is focussed on the Duo Normand, which is around 6 or 7 weeks away…