I've ridden this event four times and just ducked under 2 hours on a couple of occasions. Being a point to point TT the wind makes a bigger difference than usual and thankfully, yesterday, there was very little of it about. There was however plenty of sun, but being an early start most of the course was in shade as we headed South. I had Pat Wright of Paceline three minutes behind me, so my aim was to try to keep him from overtaking me for a long as possible. There's not a lot of Pat but he is extremely fast and has won a few open events this year. This however was to just be a training ride for him so while I was in full TT gimp outfit, Pat was on his road bike and road clothing so at least he was giving me a bit of a handicap. Dale had dropped out so it would be left to Simon and I to duke it out to be the first Phoenix rider in this event so there was quite a lot to go for. Simon and I are very evenly matched with us both beating each other only by a handful of seconds over various distances with our last 50 only separated by 1 second so it would be tight.
It's quite lumpy until you get to the Great Daux roundabout at about 20 miles before the A24 opens up to proper dual carriageway. I think I probably overcooked it again in the early part but was glad I still hadn't seen Paceline Pat. It was not until the penultimate roundabout at Washington that he went past me, with a much higher cadence than anything I could manage, and I really struggled up this last climb. I gave it everything over the last two miles and saw 1:52:xx on my Garmin which was a 5 minute pb. My final time was 1:52:45. Simon's was 1:52:46! So in 46 miles of racing we were split by 1 second. I get the feeling that had the event been 47 miles I would have lost.
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