Beacon Wheelers 10TT - 05 Sept 2020
Words by Alasdair Macmillan
One of the only 10m TT's running meant a long drive to get to this one, thankfully the starting time was 2pm and not the usual 8am!
Packed the car the night before anyway as had to take Harry to his football for 10am. The drive down was going ok until I remembered what I'd forgotten...I always forget something! So a quick stop in at Sport Direct at Gretna to get a head sweatband. :D
Around 1.30pm and about 5 miles from HQ, which was a gazebo on a strip of grass just off the A66, the heavens opened and the rain was bouncing off the road... Great!!
As I pulled in at the side of a grassy verge the sun came back out. I headed over to the Gazebo, signed in (with my own pen) and took my number off the washing line.
Just as I was finishing my warm up the heavens opened again and the rain was lashing down. I put the disc wheel on squeezed into a now soaking wet Skinsuit, donned my pointy helmet and road off to the start about 2 miles along the A66.
My Garmin couldn't find a Satellite signal until 20 metres before the start line to give you an idea as to how thick the rainclouds overhead must have been.
I pulled in and waited my turn for the off. No pusher offer, but here we go...
Traffic was busy and there was a lot of road spray, I was already struggling to see and there was a stiff breeze from the right hand side to contend with too.
I was making good progress and the speed was keeping high, I could just make out another cyclist's rear light ahead and so dug in a bit more, I was gaining... About 3.5 miles in I caught my minute man and gave them a wide berth.
Another mile in and I could only see out of a small square about 1cm across in my visor, the spray, rain and steam was making this more difficult... so the visor was flung as far left as I could manage and landed in a layby (I'll go back for that later I thought). The turn came about 5.3 miles in, a long sweeping roundabout which I took gingerly given the amount of surface water. As I came to the turn-off and headed back along the A66 I heard someone shout - "Wrong Junction!", I thought "no way... your f***ing kidding!" I sat up looked around but couldn't see who it was, then I saw another TT'er heading towards me and knew I was on the right road. Phew!
It was hard work for the next 2 miles into a bit of a gusty headwind but I was on the homeward leg now! Time was looking good, I needed to hang on. 8 miles, 9... just 1 left, lets pick this up. Lifted the power and going hard, I could see a couple on the left - was this the finish...? started to kick... no, they were taking photos... arrgghhh still 1/4 mile to go... kicked again and shouted my number as I crossed the line.
Then a long winding couple of miles back to the Gazebo, still raining but starting to ease off now I signed out, packed up and drove another 126 miles home. I did take a look at the layby where my visor had been ditched... but nothing :( oh well...
MRCC had a good turn out with 3 of us there! Paul Davis and Andrew Scott were off a little after me, so I never got to see them. But they both smashed great times with a 21:02 for Andy (11th overall) and 21:08 for Paul (15th overall) - very close guys!!
First time into the 22's for me so very chuffed with that - 22:28 on the day for 43rd overall - I'll take that out of around 160 entries.