Brian Phillips writes…
On Saturday, I betrayed my heritage with EGCC and, as required by the rules of the CTT, slipped a red and white road jersey of the West Suffolk wheelers over my long sleeved EGCC skin suit. Number 25 duly attached to the disguising jersey, I was accompanied by two genuine WSW members Dale Sturman (of 24 hour notoriety in his club as record holder) and David Giffin (who lives within a mile of me and is a willing? Accomplice on winter rides).
Our mission, having overcome the main challenge of the day to fit 3 bikes, 8 wheels, 3 kit bags and three 6ft blokes in a VW Touareg without putting anything on the roof, was to deliver a ride in the Antelope 3 up TTT. The course was not particularly challenging, no real hills but a good old sou-westerly made up for that. We’d all ridden on Saturday morning training rides together but not managed to organise ourselves into trying a 3up ride at speed before the day.
So somewhat into the unknown, but hey this is only 50km so can’t be a problem can it? Two laps on the menu, and an amazing 225 riders (75 teams of 3), made for a busy afternoon for the time keeper trying to fathom out who’s with whom, lap 1 or 2 or just warming up etc!!! And some guy has a half egcc and half wsw outfit on!!
No matter, this was never meant to be simple, and lap one passed uneventfully although not devastatingly quickly (at least for us)! Lap two was being consumed well, but with about 6 miles to go our 24hr man, without notice or even moaning just blew and looking back was not in sight. The other two mean sods decided to carry on for a time, but not an official result as 3 needed to finish together!
We did wait for Dale after the flag, and soon were on talking terms again! Perhaps we need to do a few more together to get the hang of this thing or maybe Dale should have given the Saturday morning 2.5 hour training ride a miss with the race being in the afternoon! First DNF of the year…..
