Hemel Hempstead Cycling Club

The season has officially started!

Tonight was the first of the evening 10's and the weather for the time of year was quite favourable with a bright sky and a light southerly breeze and temps around 13ºC (cooler than it appeared actually).

A reasonable sized field of 28 riders turned out, with 23 of them Hemel club members.

Local fast rider Michael Broadwith (Shorter Rochford RT) looked set for the fastest time of the night, coming home first on the road with a fine 21:35, but in fact he was beaten into 2nd place when the flying form of Conor Dunne whizzed past the (surprised!) timekeeper in a great 21:22 - a PB by some 40 seconds on the course! That ranks him amongst the fastest juniors ever on the course. And astoundingly he has all of this year - and next year too - to become the fastest, and also to try to find time to find a fast course to maybe threaten Jon Hunt's club records! Many thought those records would be unbeaten… but it looks possible they may be within reach.

3rd on the night was comeback man Matt Meadows who also managed to put significant time into JD who was 4th.

On handicap, it will come as no surprise to learn that Conor won this by a country mile, with a big PB and the only one to do so. Perhaps fittingly and not too surprisingly the next on handicap was also one of the clubs ever improving Juniors with Rob Hill clocking a time only 7 seconds from his PB. He was followed closely behind by Matt Jones and another improving junior James Conibear in 4th.

Thanks to Gavin Atkins, Stuart Turner, Julian Smith and John Dunne for the marshalling and pushing duties, Dave Rogers for the additional timekeeping.

Next weeks duties are to be fulfilled by Gavin Atkins (again!), JD, Andrzej Bojarski, and Conor Dunne. You will note they are all fast guys…

The reason for that is because the 2nd event of the series is traditionally the one that we award the Longmarkers trophy. This trophy is for a slower rider who has not beaten 25 minutes in recent years. We then see who of those qualifyers is the fastest.

The term longmarker is one from the old art of track race handicapping… a slower rider on a track race would be a long way around (on a long mark from the start) the track compared to the scratch man so would have a big head start - hence longmarker.

A reminder that any amendments to your marshalling rota needs to be arranged by yourself and notified to me. I forgot to make notes of some sent to me about a month ago so need these sending again.

I also need to have at least one volunteer to help out at the Norlond Combine 50 on Sunday 17 May. This is not an optional thing - we must provide some people with this. My original pick has been sent away that weekend so is unable to do it. Please let me know if this can be done by you.

Cheers,
Paul