Even a hurricane could not deter three hardy Thorpers in the chase for more silverware for the club 15 mile championships up on the 15 miles course from Grafton along the Red Wall & Walshford course.

A head wind out, that threatened to rip our helmets, off was a baptism of fire and was compounded by the niggly little rises and terrible road surface (especially from the Walshford RB to the turn!).

Jack and I passed and when I got to the passing point coming back I was 20 seconds down and thought this was acheivable on the fast wind assisted return leg. Although the wind was on our backs we all mentioned how there were horrible rises that took the edge off coming back. It was extremely hard to maintain 30 and at times on the rises, we were down to low 20s!

When I saw Rob going into the headwind up the steepest section I had to laugh, as the look on his face was one of pure torture, that was just as I felt a few minutes earlier like cycling was the last activity we ever wanted to be doing!!! It’s supposed to be fun FFS

Times were

Jack -38.11

Steve-38.31

Rob-40.21

Well done to Jack, he thorughly deserved his win as I totally emptied myself today. A classy win on a horrible day, chapeau my man! (And thanks for the lift too buddy).

I thoroughly enjoyed the race and is good to be back racing again, bring on the 2-up next week for more pain, fun and laughter.

My garmin data here. (Avg cadence 100RPM!!!!) [1] http://connect.garmin.com/activity/113467672