Sunday the 1st July saw the running of the clubs first Open TT of the year on the H25/17 course.
This runs on the A420 from Cumnor to Farringdon and back and at 8am on Sunday morning isn’t too busy (which may be good or bad depending on your perspective on time trialling).
This was the third year of running the event and I am pleased to say that I got away with a rather laissez faire attitude to organization. The final registration date came and went whilst I was on a jolly working hard in Paris and I returned to an entry list of around 59 (including a few late entries, all of whom completed registration forms (thanks Malc for helping explain that process to me).
At 5.30am when I put the signs out there was no wind, but as the start-time approached a decent breeze appeared pushing people towards the turn. This isn’t a bad direction as it makes the uphill first leg faster, and the first section after the turn then has a very favourable gradients. But, the last 8miles or so (and especially the hill up to Tubney roundabout*) do make some realise that 10mile TT’s are plenty far enough. The wind direction was very similar to those of the DPCC event where Mr Bialoblocki smashed the course record by about 3 minutes (45:49, make a note of this time!) with the temperature being slightly warmer.
The turnout of 59 (including 6 Oxonians and a tandem) was missing some of the regular fast guys owing to the National 50 being scheduled on the same day, but it did include Hamish Bond who was the expected favourite for the event. Matt Rowley and David Hansen bookended the finishers with my poor start-sheet leaving David starting late on (sorry David, I will do better next year). Oxonians performed very well with PB’s at 25miles from Pete Saunders (1:03:17), Ian “Rad” Radburn (1:04:23), Emma McDermott (1:06:52), Tracy Makin 
(1:07:59). But none were quite as fast as Mr Bond who posted an impressive 45:52 (winning by around 6 minutes!). He was disappointed not to have broken the course record and was intrigued to know the relative course conditions compared to the previous DPCC event (“similar” was my honest answer). It turns out that Hamish has transferred from rowing where he used to be quite good (Wikipedia tells me of his 2 Olympic golds and 8 world-championship golds) and he seems to be picking up TTing rather well! A bronze in the TT at the Commonwealth games (Wikipedia has yet to be updated to include his win in our 25 Open event in his palmares, but there is a lag with these updates of course!). The female winner was Debbie Davidson of Mickey Cranks (1:02:05), with the Crankies also capturing the team prize (Turner, Renshaw, Davidson) perhaps owing to Pete Oliver’s puncture ruining the chances of FUCT. Tony Turner was the VTTA victor (+14:05).
Thanks to Mick and Marion for the results board, Jerry and Howard for TK duties, all the marshalls, and particularly to Emma and Anna for the lovely cakes.
So, an exciting day and nice to have someone properly fast in one of our events.
*After the event Hamish did mention that the hill up to the roundabout was tough and that it was so slow that he was only doing 24mph. I felt lucky to avoid burdens of needing to average 33mph!
