www.dadswell.co.uk Mostly cycling records, mostly on three wheels
Oh,
put another Record on ......
March 2003
Okay, let's keep things in perspective. We're probably
not
really talking about a Blue Riband route, and we
are
dealing with a (mixed-crew) tandem-tricycle, and it's still early in the
season. But let's see what happened......
Before she had even returned from wintering in Spain, I had booked
Marina Bloom for an end-of-March record attempt. We agreed on the
date of 27th March, and on the route, which was to be Birmingham to
Northampton and back. This route is recognised by the Midlands
RRA, with a mixed-tandem-tricycle record of 4h 37m 14s set by Les Lowe
and Ann Dunk in 1985.
Tony Shardlow was our timekeeper, and he sent us off at 1100 in bright
sunshine, riding into a light easterly breeze. We had chosen a
village called Braunston as our start/finish point, which meant that we
had 14 miles of riding to do to arrive at the Northampton turning point.
But before that, we had a mile of climbing in the first two miles.
We then zoomed down to the crossroads at Weedon, waited for ages at the
lights, and then crept up the hill on the other side. Things were
then a little easier, and we arrived at the Northampton turn one minute
ahead of our schedule.
My
guess was that we would be able to do the 91 mile ride at something
approaching 22 mph, and I'd scheduled for us to take 4h 11m for the
trip. Back at Weedon, we were a little luckier with the traffic,
and got through with a 3 minute advantage. Despite riding quite
strongly for the next few miles, we were only 4 minutes up as we passed
our start point. After climbing to Dunchurch, we found ourselves
six minutes up at the next check, and an exciting 10 minutes up as we
started around the Coventry ring road. There are some problematic
junctions along that stretch, but we reached the western end with an 11
minute advantage, having averaged almost 24 mph for the first 50 miles.
Things were then very fast along to the M42, where we were 14 minutes
up. There were then a number of problems related to heavy traffic
and junctions, which resulted in us going around the Birmingham turn
with 13 minutes between us and schedule. With the wind in
our faces, we then surrendered 2 more minutes by the time we were back
at the M42 junction.
I
guess we then just "dug in" for the last 25 miles. I don't
remember any particularly fabulous sections, but it was really just a
case of desperately trying to preserve whatever advantage we had, and
hopefully dip inside 4 hours at the end. Coventry was again a
difficult section, although there was some light relief as a taxi driver
shouted out "watch out for the speed cameras!".
It
would be great to report that we really wound things up for the last
dozen miles, but unfortunately the wind was the thing that was getting
up, and it was all we could do to gnaw away at our schedule. We
had crept up to a 13 minute advantage again with 5 miles to go, and the
question was whether we could hold on.
With a mile or so to go, we were given a shout to "sprint for the church
spire!", and that's what we did. It was very handy for me to have
a landmark to tell me how far there was to go, and we managed to lift
the pace for the last few minutes, eventually crossing the line after 3h
56m 42s, which (I later worked out) gave us a 23 mph ride, and over 40
minutes taken off the record.
By
the time we'd taken a few minutes to wind down, there was a pleasing
little crowd gathered at the finish, and it was quite a while before we
were changed and ready to get a late lunch at the nearby hostelry.
Overall, it was a good spot of exercise in weather that was really quite
impressive for March. The locals were telling me that it's always
sunny, bright, and warm .... but I'm not so sure.
Ralph