On Sunday 11th October, I competed in an open team time trial hosted by Chippenham wheelers, along with Charlie Kelly (a fellow Epic coached rider), and Felix Young, a VC Walcot rider and Scorpions coach.
We had ridden the course before, so knew what would be coming and how to tackle it best. Due to this we were able to go into it with a plan for different terrain and parts of the course where conditions changed.
We set off at a good rate, much quicker than we had before, and it seemed like we were going to set a very good time. However Charlie suffered a mechanical issue with part of his bottom bracket coming out, so we had to stop whilst Charlie put it back in. It was a quick fix, but it cost us time that we would have to make up again.
On the bigger climbs I would sit on the front, with Felix taking us down the other side, and then all of us pulling on the flats and slight inclines or declines. With this we were able to get around the course efficiently, and coming in to the final few miles we were all riding on the edge of the saddle.
Going up the final climb I again pulled on the front, and by the top we were feeling dead, but then before we knew it we had crossed the finish line.
We recorded the quickest time at that point, the first sub 1 hour, and overall were comfortably inside the top 10 with a time of 59:33, narrowly missing out on the composite team win.
