Background on Dave Pitt's ride to take the 50 & 100 records from me in
1991.
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1990
Dave had scheduled for the 50 miles, 100 miles and 12 hours records.
All in one ride.
He had chosen to start on the Cumbria/Durham border, on the A66 west of
Bowes. This gave him a substantial downhill start which fed onto
the A1 southbound at Scotch Corner. His route then followed
the A1 all the way through to Doncaster where he had to detour off
(because of A1(M)) and back on at Blyth. The route then
stayed with the A1 until Alconbury where he would peel off onto the A14
heading towards Harwich.
Because he was trying to fit the 12 hours in to an autumn day, he had a
start time of 7am.
Now, this is all fine. However, Pauline Strong also had intentions
on the women's bicycle 100 record, and she had a Notice submitted for an
A1 course from Blyth to Sandy starting at 11am.
She selected her day and notified the RRA. Dave then
selected the same day for his ride. (no great surprise as both
rides needed the same conditions)
With Pauline starting at Blyth at 11am, the RRA secretary spotted that
there was a possibility that Dave might be getting to Blyth at just
about the same time that Pauline was starting. There
was thus a possibility of more than one aspirant using the same stretch
of road at the same time. This would go very much against
the Unpaced Condition in the RRA rules, and so the secretary told Dave
that he would have to move his start time to 8am.
Ironically, this meant that Dave lost any interest in the 12 hour
record. Ironic because if he was only going for the 50 & 100
records he wouldn't actually get on to the overlap section - and hence
the change wouldn't be necessary.
Anyhow, Dave drove to Bowes Moor. At 7am it was freezing -
literally. There was ice all over the road. He was
lucky that his start time had been pushed to 8am, but even then it was
treacherous. So he used a clause in Rule 12.01 which allows the
start to be delayed by up to 30 minutes because of unforseen
circumstances. When he set off at 8.30am, it was still cold & he
was clothed from head to foot.
He did the entire ride in the clothes he needed at the start, and so
must've been steaming at the end. But if he'd stopped, he might
possibly have taken a while to perform the change, and that could've
cost him the 100 record.
He had a decent margin on the 50 record, helped by the fact that when I
did the ride there was a short detour after 15 miles. The detour
was an annoying necessity because there aren't 100 decent miles between
the M25 and Lowestoft.
His margin was down to 1m 20s at the 100 point. This was
obviously much less than the damage I'd previously done to his old
record, but still plenty enough to be described as comfortable.
He was clearly lucky with the circumstances forcing him to shift his
start by an hour, as riding at 30+ mph on icy roads would surely have
been disastrous.
However, even if things hadn't worked out for him on that day, I can be
sure that he would've had another go. He wasn't going to
just abandon the project. He had the belief & wasn't going to give
up after one wasted journey.
# # # # #
Meanwhile, I was part of the support crew for Pauline's 100 mile
attempt. We were completely ignoring Dave Pitt, as we had
problems of our own. When we had arrived at Blyth on the
previous evening we were confronted with massive roadworks at the Blyth
Nornay roundabout. The course was supposed to start on the A614
200 yards north of the roundabout.
The A614 was completely closed and there was no way to get onto the A1
without riding through rubble on the building site. We spent quite
a bit of time on the phone to the RRA Secretary discussing what options
we had.
In the end we decided the only option we had was to pace out the
distance between the scheduled start and a suitable alternative on the
A1. Even this was tricky because we got a load of grief for
walking through the roadworks area when not authorised.
Fortunately we managed to agree a number of paces. The attempt
started on time and Pauline made good progress. When we were past
75 miles, the car I was in went ahead to allow us to adjust the finish
point. Naturally we were sure to make the course long rather
than short. Pauline beat the required time, so all we had to do
was get the course remeasured.
Fortunately, (a few weeks later) we were advised that the revised course
was valid. Less fortunately, the first thing Alan Strong
said to me after the end of Pauline's ride was "By the way, Dave Pitt
broke both your records." Darn it.
Back to Rides in
1990