Scorching Along the A11
Aug 2000
While Mike Hutchinson was winning the battle against Kevin Dawson in the
mainstream section of the Shaftesbury CC 50, there was (as ever) a
tandem tricycle desperately trying to catch them both.
A
vain chase, as you might expect, but one that bore some esoteric fruit,
nonetheless.
This was the third time Dave Johnson and I had made a serious attempt to
beat the 1996 time of 1.47.43 set by Knapp and Cosgrove. We needed
to record 21-32 for each of the five 10 mile splits - something we were
sure that we could do, but just something we hadn't actually done on the
previous couple of tries.
In
simple terms, the course is just "out and back" using the A11 & A14 as
it goes past Newmarket. However, there's always that fiddly little
bit for the first few miles, and the last few. And the fiddly bit
involves four roundabouts each way - no bother on any machine, except a
tandem tricycle.
So,
we were down on schedule after 5 and 10 miles. But by this time
Dave was getting warmed up, and we clawed our way back to the required
speed. So when the 24 mile turn point was reached, we were about
15 seconds ahead.
I
was nervous about maybe discovering that we had been gently blown
towards the turn. However, there didn't seem to be a breeze in our
faces when we made our way along the return leg, and this allowed us to
steadily increase the difference between us and the record.
As
we reached the 45 mile point, the record was in the bag, and the only
thing we needed to worry about was crashing. Happily, the
roundabouts didn't give trouble, and we swept through Great Chesterford
to finally hit the finish point in 1hr 45 min 16 sec.
This was 2 min 27 sec faster than the previous record, and is our fourth
record as a tandem pairing. I'm still harbouring the uneasy
feeling that my principal roles were to provide the machine, drive to
the start, do the steering etc ...... and if you'd seen me changing the
gears at one point, you'd be wanting to sack me from that job as well.
Ralph