Ben Crick writes…

Having  seen the alternative route for the evening hilly TT and being probably the worst descender in the club I chose to ride with Horsham cc on their evening 10 G10/57.

I arrived early and due to the large entry and being a guest I was off 23rd. I have been disappointed with my times so far this year so needed a different approach. I read a great article that advised splitting the race into 4 parts which involved starting off just under race pace for quarter 1, riding race pace for next quarter, just over race pace for the third and then all you have left for the final push. Now this may be standard practice for a lot of club members but I had not tried it before so I decided to give it a go.

After my 4 up ride with the lads I also saw the value in a good warm up and actually rode about 5 miles with a few short bursts to get the engine going.

Q1 felt too easy and slow but I kept to the plan and rode through Q2 with my HR at 168 to 170 which I know I can hold for 25 mins. At 5 miles was only 5 secs down on my PB pace. Q3 I let my HR go up to 175 and by q4 it was around 178 to 180. I crossed the line in 25:03 which was 27 secs better than my PB set on the same course. I was held up on the last roundabout so a sub 25 was on the cards.

Lesson learnt for me was to have a game plan and stick to it. Start slow and finish strong