Club Run Report 15th March 2015

I was expecting numbers to be low with a number of the usual long group suspects having competed in the 2nd race of the NCRA series at Old. It was looking even more desperate at 8:30 with just myself and Bomber lined up for the 64 miles that lay ahead of us, but with a level of tardiness that would have Joe pressing the kudos button we had strengthened to eight as we set off dead on time at 8:42AM.

Of the eight was king of the previous days events Jacob, and it was fortunate we had a job lot of rose petals handy to throw in his path during the course of the morning.

The wind direction had swapped from the usual South Westerly to a Northerly breeze and this kept the temperatures down to a level that suggested winter had not completely disappeared. It also meant that we were to undertake one of the lesser ridden routes that took us up to Sawtry.

The 20 or so miles out were relatively uneventful although some of the roads and their surfaces wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Hell of St Neots ride. The turn was made and it was then that we had the benefit of roughly 26 miles of tailwind.

Surprisingly the route for the area could almost be considered undulating with the B660 from Sawtry through Kimbolton having a number of reasonable inclines to tackle. I would also consider the route to be rather cruel in that at mile 48 we passed the turn for Bushmead and plough straight on to Gt Barford and the final climb of the day, an ascent of Everton hill. It was here that the group split with myself and Jacob chain gaining back to the square followed by Simon and Richard who arrived a minute or so after us.

All in all a nice route that will probably get fine tuned to take out some of the more pot-holed roads on a day where the brief showing of shorts from the previous week proved a distant memory.

Gary