Evening 10 June 2009
Hello all,
As we get to the closest evening to the longest day, You hope that the normal light winds that apparently are common at this time of year would come true... Sadly tonight it wasn't the case. The stiff breeze was a rather unhelpful crosswind from the left on the way out... which didn't seem that helpful on the way back as much as you would have expected. At least despite the many clouds it didn't look like it would rain, and typically by the end of the race the clouds had blown away to reveal a bright blue sky.
So even with the wind, the fast boys didn't seem to notice it that much and Ross Clarke (Team Milton Keynes) blasted round only a few seconds slower than his best so far this year. In 2nd place Gavin Atkins was also just a handful of seconds from his best set last week (although that was a breezy day too). 3rd place went to Paul Caton (Anders-Horizon RT) who improved on his time from last week, but was still three-quarters of a minute down from Gavin. Steve Clarke (Team Milton Keynes) was 4th another half a minute down, but still he was half a minute up on JD, although JD was riding just his road bike (in preparation for the Athletes ten in 2 weeks??).
On handicap Paul Harris upped his fixed wheel gear from stupidly low to a bit bigger, and that resulted in a big improvement of nearly a minute and an expected win by some margin on handicap. Another improver on the night (how - it was hard!?!) was Martin Alexander with a 25 second improvement netting him 2nd on handicap. Geoff Reynolds is another one with a significant improvement and his 17 second PB brought him 3rd on handicap - that's despite his allowance being cut (very slightly) after last weeks win. Elliot Kidd was not far from his best ever time tonight and that garnered 4th place on handicap - and that without any proper training so far this year it would seem (just think how much quicker you might go!?).
Thanks go to Stuart Wells, Richard Greaves and Matt Jones for the marshalling, and Bob Clark and Dave Rogers for the timing and pushing off.
Paul
| Pos | Name | Time | Points | Ttl Pts | H'cap Pts | Ttl H'cap Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ross Clarke (Team Milton Keynes) | 21:32 | ||||
| 2 | Gavin Atkins | 21:56 | 20 | 119 | 14 | 82 |
| 3 | Paul Caton (Anders Horizon RT) | 22:40 | ||||
| 4 | Steve Clarke (Team Milton Keynes) | 23:07 | ||||
| 5 | John Dowling | 23:34 | 19 | 55 | 5 | 25 |
| 6 | Brad Wilson (Evans Cycles RT) | 24:03 | ||||
| 7 | Matt Meadows | 24:13 | 18 | 110 | 2 | 60 |
| 8 | Giles Haley | 24:16 | 17 | 79 | 11 | 68 |
| 9 | Geoff Reynolds | 24:30 | 16 | 57 | 18 | 42 |
| 10 | Andrew Murray | 24:41 | 15 | 71 | 7 | 40 |
| 11 | David Welling (North Hants RC) | 24:43 | ||||
| 12 | James Conibear | 25:11 | 14 | 58 | 8 | 60 |
| 13 | Stuart Turner | 25:18 | 13 | 32 | 13 | 31 |
| 14 | Martin Alexander | 25:53 | 12 | 46 | 19 | 64 |
| 15 | Ian Huntingford | 26:03 | 11 | 31 | 16 | 41 |
| 16 | Jonathan James | 26:05 | 10 | 21 | 4 | 15 |
| 16 | Helen Reynolds | 26:05 | 20 | 79 | 9 | 41 |
| 18 | Melanie Conibear | 26:06 | 19 | 79 | 3 | 32 |
| 19 | Keith Fletcher | 26:16 | 9 | 67 | 1 | 20 |
| 20 | Neil Poulter (Come & Try) | 26:50 | ||||
| 21 | David Taylor | 27:02 | 8 | 13 | 6 | 10 |
| 22 | Elliot Kidd | 27:38 | 7 | 11 | 17 | 29 |
| 22 | Paul Thomson | 27:38 | 7 | 61 | 12 | 84 |
| 24 | Grahame Freeman | 28:04 | 5 | 36 | 15 | 73 |
| 25 | Paul Harris | 28:19 | 4 | 10 | 20 | 36 |
| 26 | Jon Burgess | 28:53 | 3 | 12 | 10 | 22 |