Isle of Bute Race Weekend
Isle of Bute Race Weekend - September 18th 2021
Words by Warren Crombie
Wee trip to the famous isle of Bute this weekend. My brother travelled from London with his wife and we made a weekend of it staying in Tighnabruaich....
We had entered the 2 up tt on the saturday afternoon which turned out a top feild of 50 teams....
Early start saturday to allow time for the ferry to Bute and a drive around the course . Once in Rosthsay we watched first half of the hill climbers take on the surpintine climb which was a good watch. ...
2.20 soon came which was our start time. Waynes alot stronger than me so we hooked up my power meter onto his garmin and had a plan he would ride flatter stuff hard and id ride hills at my own pace which he would use as recovery. As long as he kepted an eye on his garmin it should be fine....
Pace was good and slight head wind after the second turn ment he was working pretty hard on the front.....luckly the climbs were pretty sheltered so we were getting along pretty good. A strong mixed pair behind us passed us at just over half way just at the hardest part of the ride....we caught them in a horrible decent soon after and waynes lifting of the pace slightly to match theres left.me in the red for some time....finally i popped and he had to drop back for me. I was really worried at that point cos the mount stewart climb ( biggest one on the course ) was not far away and i needed to get some sort of recovery in before the start of it or id be on my knees and average speed would be dropping like a lead balloon. Luckly a down hill soon after gave me a slight recovery and I gave it everything i had left,with knowing once at the top it was a high speed decent and 3 flat kms to the finish line .....max heart rate most the way up was horrible. We were soon on the really dodgy wet decent where i managed to get to the front for abit. 3 flat kms of really horrible seal and then we were safely finished..... 51.13 was alot better than id expected.....so now just a wait to see were we finished overall.
14th place well chuffed,but totally done...
A pie at ettricks bay on the way back to the cottage went down well....
Great event, defo be back next year...