VTTA Reliability Trial

After a week of ice and freezing cold winds we were fortunate to have a weather forecast of light winds sunshine and best of all a 'sweltering' five degrees . Up for the VTTA (veteran time trial association) reliability trial this year  were just six of us , including a rare appearance from Nick Bridger. Derek and Nick set of before the main group as they knew they would be a bit slower, leaving myself, Diego and Duncan in the (relatively ) fast group. I was riding my brand new giant Defy 3 for the first time. Normally I would have taken it out during the week and endured the usual fettling of stem angle , spacers, seat height etc but with all the icy cold weather I had not had the opportunity so was hoping that my guess to the ideal set up was correct?

We were one of the last groups to set off and for the first half mile our Garmins were getting confused about where the route started. Digging out the paper map to find the correct directions soon got us back on track and my Garmin picked up the route unlike Duncans which remained confused all day (poor old 605 doesn't like tcx files)

A mile into the ride we were flagged down by a fellow cyclist who had suffered a double blow out and had run out of inner tubes, I felt sorry for him so give him one of mine in exchange for the two punctured ones which I  hope are fixable?. While the others were chatting to him I took the opportunity to raise the saddle a little and then we were off, together with our new companion who turned out to be a Rye Rover

Eventually we caught up the rest of the Rye rovers and our new companion waved us goodbye. we seemed to going faster than everyone else and were reeling in a steady stream of riders. I got stuck at a road junction and took the chance to check out why my saddle position felt strange. It turned out the saddle bolt had come loose. A quick retrieval of my allen keys from the depths of my saddle bag had it fixed but there was no longer any sign of the others. Up ahead they had realised I was missing and waited for me to catch them up, mumbling my apologies we were all back together again and I made a determined effort to pick up some speed to make up for lost time.

About half way round the course I felt my neck and shoulders stiffening up. With the height of the bars a couple of centimetres taller than my Cannondale Caad 8, I hadn't expected this but had forgotten to take into account the length of the bike. I felt that it was too much of a stretch to get my hands around the hoods and I was relying more and more on using the flat part of the bar for relief. I had mistakenly taken off the stem that came with the bike and put the longer one from my old defy but had forgotten to take into account the longer ramps on the bars.

Malc and Duncan seemed to be in excellent form and were keen to keep up the pace, while the ever considerate Diego kept dropping back for me despite me urging him to not worry about me but to go after the others. Eventually a fast little rider came round us and Diego couldn't resist giving chase, and was soon out of sight.

Lovely lovely tea!

Now having turned East into a mild head wind I settled into Zen mode and became fixated by my garmin, There were only 20 miles to go but with my now quite painful neck and shoulders , my ETA never seemed to get any shorter. At the Brenzett roundabout a police car was redirecting traffic due to a car accident across both carriageways. I am well known for having no sense of direction whatsoever so ignoring the pink line on my Garmin and having to use my brain to try to work out the roughly correct direction  filled me with apprehension. Fortunately on the Garmin touring there is a useful feature where you can  scroll across the map. Using this feature even I could work out which was the right way to go,lol.Feeling pleased to be back on route gave me a little spurt of energy but the diversion meant a couple of miles had been knocked off the route and I had missed the last check point!

Diego makes it back to HQ!

Meanwhile up ahead were Malc and Duncan.They had followed the same diversion as myself but being completionists they had doubled back to get their cards signed at the last check point. Diego was somewhere between myself and Duncan/Malc. He arrived at the checkpoint just as they were shooting off but was now completely lost

It was  relief to reach the last ten mile countdown and to spot the signs for Bethersden. Malc and Duncan had come past me but I arrived just ahead of Derek and Nick . Tea and bread pudding rarely tasted so good, but where was Diego? About half an hour later the 'wanderer' returned. having got totally lost Diego had had to resort to asking people for vague directions and had endured his own mini 'Tour De Marsh'

We all agreed that this is an ideal antidote to the relentless climbing of many local audaxes, and despite suffering a bit today , while on the Mad jack I shall look back on this as easy peasy!