Club Run Report 22nd March 2015 - long route

As current provider of the routes there’s only one rule you must adhere to, and that is “thou shall ride home in a tailwind”. Rightly or wrongly, I rely on the BBC weather forecast to determine our direction on the Sunday ride and it went like this:

Wednesday: Northerly out, Southerly back – Yes a perfect storm

Thursday: Southerly – routes chosen to head south

Saturday: Northerly – You are kidding

Sunday morning: Westerly

Actually it turned out to be a light Easterly breeze, hence the title of the run report.

The weather significantly improved over Saturday, albeit it was still just too cool for the shorts to make another showing. Point of interest it seems that Fridays are currently the best day for that so far this year.

The route was a 63 mile trip down to the hills just South of Duxford. We were to take in the views of the highest point in Cambridgeshire, Gt Chishill, and we were beside ourselves with glee trying to crack jokes about how high that actually was.

Nine set off from the square and I think we had managed to get out of St Neots before the first wrong turn of the day, but only just. In fairness the route was created without cue points, not that that will make any difference to the Garmin file users but for the RWGPS users it means it tells you what the next turn is and how far away it is.

Oh there’s another rule that I’d forgotten about and that is “thou shall not deviate from the route”. I remembered the route from last year and preferred to avoid crossing the A505 at Whittlesford so I cut the corner. Well you’d have thought I’d just run over a box of kittens, with the murmuring that was going on behind me :-)

After Duxford the route gets hillier but also the roads are in a bit of a state and Simon sporting his new CX bike with 28mm tyres didn’t appear to notice. Once at the top of the hill you are then rewarded with a long downhill all the way back down to the A505 at Fowlmere and here the speed picks up. It would appear the Joe rides an electric bike because after hitting the front he freewheeled all the way down while we ate stem but couldn’t close the 10m gap he had created.

We were now into the last part of the run that takes in one final climb at Wimpole that split the group until we re-grouped at the A1198 to chain gang it back to the Longstowe turn. From here the pace tends to lift all the way back to St Neots, but we all managed to stay pretty much together for the rest of the ride. Despite our best efforts we were not able to tire the sprinters, with honours going to Joe and Simon. Clearly the CX bike is not heavy enough and the previous days racing not tough enough.

Gary N