Always learning

I must have lost at least 20 minutes with the badly pinned number.

Last Sunday I took part in my first 100 mile time trial. I had meant to do one in the last season or two but I never seemed to get around to it, but with the 12 hour tt a few weeks away it seemed like the perfect opportunity to break this particular duck. Despite many 100 mile rides under my belt, this was a new kettle of fish, having never raced a tt this far before. I had an added complication that I only had 3 hours' sleep the night before owing to a friend's wedding. I was designated driver for the evening but it was still hardly perfect race preparation. I also found myself quite nervous about it. It's funny, but the older I get, the more conservative and cautious I am becoming. I wish I could be a bit more 'gung-ho' but I am actually turning into a bit of a worrier. Worrying!

Anyway, it went pretty well. The plan was to ride conservatively and practice my feeding and pacing for the 12. We had a few helpers from KPRC who were able to hand up bottles and food and this went really well. I ended up drinking approximately 2 litres of SIS during the ride and had 2 and a half snickers bars. All this stayed down and I was able to digest it without any major stomach issues.

The first half went very smoothly, but after halfway the weather deteriorated very badly and the riders had an hour and a half of torrential rain followed by increasing winds and steady drizzle for the remainder of it. This made using a deep section front wheel very interesting and I had to come off the drops a few times in order to make sure that I was not blown into a ditch. My pace didn't drop significantly despite this and I finished with plenty in the tank in a time of 4:37. I was hoping to get under 4:30 but with the weather conditions and it being my first attempt, I'm pretty pleased with that.

On Monday night I was back out on the river in a laance for an hour or so. A relative of Adam's is attempting next year's DW with a friend and they have been having a few issues getting going. They had bought a K2 but had so far been unable to stay the right way up in it. It looks like they have bought a Stilletto, which as it's name suggests, is hardly the most stable kayak in the world. Allied to this, at least one of the footrests is missing in their boat so they were always going to be fighting an uphill battle with their stability.  Anyway, I got them to paddle the laance and showed them some basics about setting up the boat, body position and working on getting their catch right. Pleased to report no swims and a couple of smiles on their faces with the realisation that, in the right boat, paddling's not so bad.