An update of sorts

I will make this one photo-less as I'm still a week away from having my internet reconnected. Hooray for TalkTalk.

The results

Journo world's: 1st in the time trial, 6th in the road race. I had four days (out of five) off the bike between the British champs and the journos with tonsillitis, and I paid for it.

I ended up winning the time trial quite comfortably (15 km in 19'28, 2nd in my cat was Martin Ganglberger 20'42, 2nd in the younger cat was Fred Backelandt 20'21) but it wasn't one of my better rides. I did the first half at normal '10' pace, but the second half 20W down. Normally I can go harder in the second half, but that's the lost fitness. Otherwise it wouldabeen 20sec quicker...

Still, a fourth rainbow jersey was tops. And it fit me, so I can actually wear the thing.

The road race was a shocker. I didn't have the legs, for a start. But worse was I didn't have any cornering skills so I could barely stick with the bunch on what was an insanely technical circuit through Kranj. 3.2km long, incorporating 11 corners, a pedestrian mall with marble sections, a really tight single lane descent with a 20% hairpin near the bottom, which led onto a wooden(!) bridge, followed by a sharp left hander then up a short but steep climb. And another hairpin at the top.

Each lap, I'd lose a bit on the downhill hairpin, take the bridge too fast, nearly catch on, then brake for the corner off the bridge and start the climb 20m off the back. Horrible. Once I did move up and just got in the way, so I moved back down.

The race was won by Eros Maccioni, who also won in Salzburg a couple of years ago. He didn't race the TT and I knew he'd be the one to watch. He got away with Herr Ganglberger at halfway and that was that.

We had a great night afterwards though. The Belgians had brought beer with them.

I stayed on in Slovenia for a few more days, and we travelled from one end of the country to the other. We started up near the Hungarian border and stayed at an amazing 'boutique hotel' called the Sonca Hisa. Primoz was doing a story on it so we got a free night. Five rooms, all differently styled with an amazing attention to detail, very comfortable, excellent food for brekky, lovely staff, even a massage (although I don't think the masseur did my back much good). 250 euros a night...

Then we moved to Lake Bohinj in the Julian Alps. Also stunning and we did some very hilly riding. The place we stayed at was the polar opposite to the Sonca Hisa but still very friendly.

I'll upload some pics when I get connected.

I came back on the Thursday then went to Normandy on Friday with Robin for the Duo Normand. You can read the full story on that here. Brilliant event, hopefully we can do it again next year.

BTTC: win-win

Dunnit!

The British time trial championships has been run and won (it's important to have a punchy opening line like that). Brad Wiggins showed exactly why he is one of the best riders in the world, getting round the 50.4km course in 1:02:15. Hutch didn't get as close as I thought he would, and clocked 1:04:34 for second. But even that was a lot faster than Chris Newton's third in 1:06:14. Pretty impressive time gaps.

Wiggins rocks for taking something like this seriously, and it was great to see him in action. He is superb. Liz and I were watching on the first corner (3.8km into the lap; it was one lap of 16.1km and two laps of 17.2km) and by 20km Wiggins was just 10sec behind his two minute man, Matt Bottrill and already 43sec up on Hutch.

Women's winner Emma Pooley ascends the Col du Botolph Claydon

Wendy Houvenaghel, second woman

Michael Hutchinson in full flight

Brad Wiggins takes the corner at Calvert

...with Matt Bottrill in tow

One lap later (37.2km), it was somewhat of a surprise to see Bottrill almost glued to Wiggins' wheel. When you're passed in a TT, you have to drop back to 25m behind whoever passes you. If you manage to find the strength to re-pass, or the guy in front blows up, then they have to sit 25m behind you. Somehow I don't think Bottrill re-passed Wiggo on lap 2. And given how many observers were stationed out on the course, it was suicidal of Bottrill to stay so close to Wiggins. Maybe that's what he wanted, because he got DQ'd.

It was humbling to see Wiggins in action. I worked out that based on my ride over two laps, I could have done around 1:08:30 - over six minutes behind Wiggo and four minutes behind Hutch (again). This is what an extra 100 or so watts will do for you.

But still, I had good reason to be proud of my ride. I clocked 45'09 for 33.3km to win the masters category. Result! Not just the 35-40yr age group, but every age group, which was a real surprise. Then again, last year I was over a minute off the pace of everyone but I've been consistently quicker over every distance this year so it did make sense.

In my age group, Steve Golla was second with 45'57 so there were no 'what ifs' luckily. And Ben did a great ride to finish second in the A group with 45'49 behind Danny Axford (45'14). So we both moved up one or two steps on our respective podiums compared to last year. It was a great result for Chippenham and both of us were very chuffed.

On the podium with Steve Golla (L, 2nd) and Darren Barclay (R, 3rd)
Ben (L) on the podium with Danny Axford in top spot and Dave Crawley (R) in third

I found the course a bit slower than I expected, probably because of the wind. It was against us on the first two legs, then across for the third leg, then cross/tail for the last one. So it never really felt easy. The road surface was quite good but it was rarely dead flat. We constantly had to deal with changing gradients and it was hard to go really fast at any point.

I had a bit of a moment on the second lap, bowling down the narrow back section at 44km/h and seeing one, then two, then three, then four and maybe even five tractors, although I lost count by then, coming towards me! There was a big farm on that part of the course and I feared this would happen. Bad luck to get so many though. I slowed to 25km/h, squeezed past each of them on the gravel, prayed I didn't puncture and resumed. After downloading the file later, I worked out it cost me six seconds which was annoying but it didn't make any appreciable difference.

Pacing was very good again - another improvement over last year. I took the first lap fairly steadily and lifted it on the second, which seemed to work. Power wise, I averaged 323W/330 normalised, which was one of my best rides of the season. In fact, only the Chippenham hilly in March, which I did with a recently torn calf(!), was better: 325W/333NP for 54min. Maybe not having everything going smoothly is good, because I had a raging sore throat all weekend and I've still got it.

Couple of pics at Sarah Brooke Photography: here and here.

Monday: The doc said it was a virus. Argh! Of all weeks to get sick. I could barely swallow on Monday night so I'm taking it easy, drinking lots, gargling with disprin etc. If it doesn't get better by Thursday, I'm not going to Slovenia.

Wednesday update: I saw another doc, who confirmed it was tonsilitis and gave me some penicillin. He reckons I should be fine by Saturday so I will go. Maybe just do the TT though.

Finally, I receieved a 'welcome to TalkTalk' letter today (phone/broadband connection is still weeks off). That's what I call customer service.

Cut off

Internet is limited thanks to the muppets at TalkTalk cutting me off without my say so. Grr. They blamed BT for taking over the line illegally, but when I put in an official complaint to Ofcom (telco watchdog) there was no line seizure. Buggered if I know what happened, although I didn't hold back when TalkTalk sent me a survey to fill in...

Three weeks to get my line back, six weeks for broadband. And yep, I'm going with TalkTalk again because they're cheap :-) Unfortunately they can't just reconnect me. The good news is that they won't charge me the £60 connection fee. That's very generous of them.

Racing-wise, I went up to Hull with Stu Dodd for the Team Swift Charity 10. It was a quality field, the best outside the national 10 with 20 riders having done sub-20min rides previously. We done good: I was fourth in 19'45 and Stu 5th in 19'49. Hutch won it in 18'02 - again four seconds outside comp record (Wiggins, 17'58).

Stu and I were very happy, especially as the locals said it wasn't a really fast day because of the strong crosswind. Most of them went 0'30-1'00 slower than their best times on that course. But my power numbers confirmed it was a good ride.

The trip was also worthwhile to meet some new folks and to eat fish 'n chips in Newport.

That leads onto the next fixture, which is the British TT champs in Botolph Claydon, near Bicester. I'm not going up against the elites, although it is tempting to see how I'd go against the likes of Brad Wiggins and Hutch. Instead I'll have another tilt at the Masters B (35-40) category. Got second last year and would love to go one better this year. We'll see.

The course is on quiet but good roads with a couple of small climbs. It's nearly two laps of a 17.2km loop for a total of 33.4km (elite men do three laps for 50.6km). I reckon a time of 45'00 would be enough to win any of the masters categories, but we shall see. I think Wiggo will win the elites with something close to 1:02, with Hutch not too far behind.

More anon.