Hemel Hempstead Cycling Club

Fastest: Gavin Atkins 22:03

Hi Folks,

A rather blustery evening faced the reduced field tonight, but despite the windy conditions, which meant for the 3rd week in a row there was a cross tailwind out, the times were not too bad considering although some suffered more than others in the conditions.

Fastest on the night was Gavin Atkins, having his first outing of the year and pleasantly surprised at how well he was going. Going better than Conor Dunne was tonight, who claimed he was putting out the same sort of power than gave him times about 50 seconds quicker in the first 2 weeks found him over 20 seconds down on first place. That pace was only good enough to hold off Matt Meadows by 2 seconds. Chris Starling (High Wycombe CC) was a distant 4th, closely followed home by John Lacey.

On handicap, Jon Barkworth came to the 10's for the first time this year and showed he is a bit fitter than last year by already removing a handful of seconds from his PB, and hence won on handicap. Matt Jones has shown some consitancy so far this year and again came in just short of his PB and also a couple of seconds slower than his best so far this year for 2nd on handicap. 3rd and 4th on handicap were just 1 second apart, with Simon North just pipping John Lacey by that smallest margin, and Gavin Atkins was only a few seconds further back in 5th.

Thanks to Kristian Stentoft, David Taylor and Richard Greaves for the marshalling and Neil Bradburn for the pushing, with Bob Clark back from his holiday doing the timekeeping.

Next week Gavin is back for the pushing off, with Duncan Knight, Phil Moss and Simon North due to do the marshalling duties.

I still need a marshal to volunteer for the Norlond 50 on the early morning of Sunday 17 May - a commitment we must fulfil. I need to give names to the organiser this weekend! Please let me know if you can help.

A reminder that club members must be fully paid up their annual subscriptions (membership fee) to be eligible for the reduced entry fee on the 10's (and you need to be a cycling club member to ride them anyway) and to also be included in the club competitions.

The delayed Club Dinner and Prize Presentations of the 2008 club champions, etc. will take place this coming Saturday evening at the Greyhound in Aldbury. Roger Manley might be able to squeeze you in if you forgot to say you were coming, but be quick!

Good luck to the 'girls' in there 3-up TTT on Sunday. It's taken us a couple of years to get a good team together and they have a chance of winning a decent prize (and could we pursuade them to enter the TTT champs???)

Cheers,
Paul