Report On Our ESCA 10 And 25 Mile Time Trials

LAST weekend's East Sussex Cycling Association 10 and 25 mile time trials were a success with 14 year old Fabien Large putting in the best personal performances for Hastings. After getting several early season events in his legs including a new sub 27 PB of 26:30 in West Kent RC’s recent 10 at Harrietsham Fabien set himself up for his first ever 25 mile TT with a course PB of 26:53 in the East Hoathly 10 on Saturday.

 It looked as though it was all going to go wrong for him on Sunday when his rear cassette unscrewed on his warm up. Having got there nice and early to prepare there was time for his Dad to rush over from Robertsbridge and fix it with seconds to spare before his start. His debut time of 1:07:57 may have been helped with an extra early dose of adrenaline in the build up with the uncertainty of whether he would report to the start time keeper in time!

Our best placed rider in the 25 was David Earl (1:04:25) who has had about five years off racing since he was regularly going well inside the hour. Ivan Johnson (1:05:40) who also went well under the hour a few years back was riding his fixed as smoothly as ever after being on standby to DNS in the event of a last minute need to withdraw and help cover any jobs that needed doing. Chris Parker (1:16:32) missed out on being lantern rouge by shading his arch rival from Lewes by nine seconds!

 It was Hastings’ responsibility to organise the 25 for the Association so a very big thank you indeed to all the club members who turned out on the day to help the event run smoothly:

Event Secretary: Chris Parker

Recording:  Malcolm Daly          

Pushing Off:  Stuart Crabb          

Signage:  Stuart Crabb

Marshals: Simon Grogan, Steve Curtis, Paul Butler and Colin Vicary (taking photos) at the Boship roundabout, Terry Sowa and Peter Brehme at Little Horsted roundabout and Romana Miles and Tim Miles at Black Down roundabout.

Refreshments:    Pippa Parker  

Of course others were involved: ESCA officials, time keepers and especially Ann Human (Rovers) with her superb results presentation on screen (points table etc too), plus loan of signs from Rovers      

On the April ESCA 25 weekend Black Down roundabout (the one by MacDonalds) should be renamed Romana's roundabout since it may well be more than 15 years that she has marshalled there. Tim was on the start sheet but was a DNS to help Romana. They had their work cut out as the later starters went by since a triathlon had their competitors taking the first exit with the ESCA 25 taking the second exit to continue on the A22. It was a bit scary at times with a couple of our riders and many of the triathletes not having researched and remembered the course or listened to the briefings and warnings. We had one DNF off course, a rider who went window shopping in Uckfield !

 Paul Holdaway (24:24) was not feeling great and backed off towards the end of Saturday's 10 to post our best time and pick up our only ESCA points of the weekend, so unfortunately he was a DNS for the 25. Also riding the 10 were David Earl (25:42) and Chris Parker (45:18) who stopped for a slow repair to a slow puncture after seven miles.

Chris Parker

Photographs of the event on Facebook here. many thanks to Colin Vicary of Tenn-Outdoors