March 3- Club Ride:Hard Riders Reconnaissance

Welcome To The Club Nick

About To Join The Hard Riders Route

With the hard Riders TT only two weeks away, we thought it would be a good idea to show newbies the route of the Hard riders Time Trial and to remind everyone else of just how hard it really is. To make a 50 mile ride of it, we took a twisty roundabout route through Battle, Catsfield,and Hooe before finally arriving on the route itself, at the top of Boreham street.With us on only his second club ride was Trevor Deeble. Also with us was totally new rider  to the club,Nick Sargant . Nick got in touch with us a few weeks ago, and having seen his stats on Strava it looked like he would be able to keep up. This proved to be very much correct as Nick was significantly faster than both myself and Steve D. Once we got to the start of agony hill, things really heated up and we broke up into two groups: the faster riders (Simon G, Trevor, Barney, Chris C) and the slower ones (myself, Steve D, Andy C and Nick). Andy was getting dropped further and further back so decided to complete the ride at his own pace. That left the three of us in the back group to try to catch up with the fast group but as it was we were well behind and didn't see them again until the official start at Bodle street green where they were waiting for us. On reaching the A271 we split up into two groups again with myself, Barney, Trevor and Nick determined to complete the route while the others took the shorter more direct route back on the main road. A short while later Barney started to get the 'knock' really bad ,those high miles in cold weather finally catching up with him, but a couple of snack bars dug out of jersey pockets soon put him right. One reaching Rickney with the end of the ride in sight we were disappointed to find ourselves riding into a strong bitingly cold head wind. This made the last 13 miles really hard going and I was grateful to hide behind either Trevor or Nick's real wheel for much of the last ten miles. By coincidence we bumped into Simon N and Stuart about to set off from Stuart's house for the Hard riders circuit, they looked a bit wary when they saw the knackered state we were in. Apparently the wind is going to turn around to the South West next week, thank goodness.