The time has come to start my BBAR campaign, and with it I took in a nice early morning 50 on the A1 near Tempsford. Being May, early morning temperatures were always going to be low, but after the spate of warm weather recently, it had decided to turn even more chilly again. Still at least it would warm up a little once riding, and too be honest I never actually felt that cold.
The course is a pretty rapid course, as it is fairly flat and has a good surface, I also like the fact it has little traffic on it on a Sunday morning, though by the time you finish the traffic volumes have increased somewhat. The downside is that it can be quite exposed, and with a nice westerly wind you had a nice strong crosswind for the full length of the course, though some sections were pretty much sheltered, and others very open.
It had been a bit of a tiring week leading up to Sunday, with a colleague off work, it meant a couple of long days driving around the country looking after our equipment, at least I wasn't knackered from training though. With a couple of easy days in the office and sat around at home watching F1 and the Giro I felt pretty good on Sunday morning, though with a 4am alarm call not the brightest person on the planet.
After a short warm up I rode to the start, and whilst keeping warm riding up and down the road, I noticed it just seemed pretty quick for minimal effort, though I was pretty sheltered from the wind I found out later. Once I got going I found a power range where I felt good, and decided to keep it at that level and see how I faired (it was a similar level to the week previous, and that was under half the distance). It might be over optimistic, but you might as well give it all you have. Being a 2 lap course it is pretty easy to gauge average speed for each of the 25 miles.
Once on the A1 the wind made it presence felt, though it seemed that it was not quite a direct crosswind, and found the southbound leg seemed a little tougher than the northbound leg, though to be honest, but the end of the race speeds seemed to be fairly similar so probably more in my head than anything else. After the first 15 miles and at the northern turn, I took in a gel, and the average speed wasn't looking too bad. I felt pretty comfortable and with it seeming to be a bit of a cross headwind I upped the effort slightly and still felt OK, this had the effect of keeping the average speed around the 28.5 mph mark. I crossed the 25 mile point at 52:36, and I started calculating how quick the 2nd 25 could be. I realised I wasn't going to be as fast as the last time I rode the course, but figured I should be able to get a sub 1:45 if I could get a quicker 2nd 25 miles.
The wind had been picking up throughout the ride however, and I noticed that as I rounded the southern turn it seemed harder to keep the average speed up, I tried to up the effort and this was possible for short durations, though longer efforts seemed to be a bit more challenging. After 32 miles I downed another gel, and this seemed to perk me up a little and I managed to up the average speed slightly by the northern turn again. All this left was a nice 9-10 mile effort to the finish, but by heck doing a solid 10 effort with 40 racing miles in the legs isn't easy. I tried as best I could to keep the power high, and the speed high, each little drag seemed to sap even more life from me, but the speed was still there, and each little downhill part provided a little micro recovery.
Still trying to calculate what sort of average speed would be needed whilst racing can prove difficult sometimes, but I thought that a 28.7mph average should be enough to get a sub 1:45. As the miles counted down and with the time slowly creeping up, it seemed as though I might miss my target, in the last mile I saw my 5 min man ahead of me, Dean Lubin, and I think this was just the carrot I needed, this last mile I just gave everything I had and as I slowly closed on Dean I noticed I was averaging 28.7mph on the Garmin. I passed Dean about half a mile from the finish and just dug in as I saw the time getting every closer to 1:45, but the chequer board just seemed to be getting no nearer. Eventually I passed the finish and stopped my Garmin, I had recorded a 1:44:58 which happen to be the official time as well, that was a close run thing.
On checking power data, I noticed I had done a very solid ride, and was very pleased after last weekends performance, almost the same power for over double the duration, you can't ask more than that.
As the result came in I was the fastest on the day, and second was Paul Gamlin who had managed to beat his PB from his previous time on the course, a cracking result for him as I was 1 min slower, and alot of the riders from our previous event were over 3 mins slower. It was good solid start to the BBAR for me, but this should only be a banker ride, I am hoping that other 50 mile events will be faster and that I can go a fair few minutes faster later in the year.
1st Steve Berry 1:44:58
2nd Paul Gamlin 1:47:20
3rd Trevor Burke 1:47:51
Just one more TT series race this weekend up in the Lake District, then it is full on with the BBAR races, next BBAR race will be the Icknield 100 again on the A1 on the 2nd June, lets hope for a slightly calmer day.
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