One of my targets this year was to improve on my 50 time of 2:04:48. I targeted the East Anglia VTTA event to do it. The course took in the 10 and 25 courses on which Alex Dowsett has recently beaten the competition record. Having ridden it, I have even more respect for his achievement. The 10 course is no faster than our Raglan course and I'm sure he would take 90 seconds off his new record if he rode our 25 course!
I'd targeted a time of 2:02:30 and was using 5mile splits on my Garmin to maintain my pace. However, a tail wind out meant I rode the first 25miles in 58:11 ! As I expected, the return leg into the wind was hard and I was down to 18mph in parts. Nevertheless, I did enough to improve my time to 2:01:12. That may not sound impressive but it's 5 consecutive 24:14 tens! So today, I'm having my first Sunday off the bike in ages...
