I sincerely apologise for my very poor attendance of late, life has been a little hectic for the last 2 months.

Hope to see you all there.

Alastair (p.s - Could anyone give me directions to Loxley?)

10 minutes before the off my seat post slipped down in the seat tube, so I got the allen keys out to tighten the clamp and guess what? The bolt sheared in the clamp due to the stainless bolt seizing in the ali clamp.

I shot back up to the HQ and a few guys tried the clamps off their spare bikes but to no avail, none fitted my oversied tubing:-(

I then had a quick decision to make, sit around for 2 hours for my lift (Andy) to come back or to ride with a loose seat post with the saddle sat right on my top tube!! I chose the latter, there was no way I was getting up at 4:30 to sit in a car park in Boroughbridge for 2 hours.

Full of fury I flew down to the start and got there with exactly a minute to spare and then shot off at a “10″ pace, due to the adreniline coursing thru my veins.

I quickly slowed when it all wore off though and fought into a headwind and the steady incline on the outward leg. I had to get out of the saddle on every uphill section as I couldn’t get any power at all.

At the turn Andy took me for 3 minutes which I was pretty happy with and then we had the wind on our backs for large sections of the return leg. This was also slighlty down hill and considering i was sat more than 3 inches lower was knocking out speeds in excess of 35 MPH in sections. This was encouraging as I overtook about 7 riders and started to feel pretty happy.

I began to get pain in my left thigh in the last 10 miles(which was nice!) but managed to just hold off my minute man recording 2:11:12.

Seriously need to do another 50 ASAP to excorcise the demons!

Andy won the YCF handicap by a handsome margin and pocketed £40 in the process but Paul just pipped him for the Club championship by 16 seconds.

It was quite a breezy day as well so it must be a fast course. To get under the hour on my first 25 was wonderful and Matt PB’d too. Hatty rode but was hampered by illness but still knocked out a 4 I think.

Matt came around about 2nd or 3rd in his category (B) and I had the shortest time, I think, in my category(E), pity we are not vets!! Only 3 years to go for me (is that a good thing, or a bad thing?:-))

I just hope that nobody really notices the results so I can get a good handicap for the club 25!!!

any of the local pubs would be easy as they aren’t that busy.

The Fountain would do snacks if we asked.

Steve, is now club social sec, and matt is the anti-social sec!

That’s six of us so 4 more would be great, and we could take some seats out and use one vehicle.

rough timetable, leave at 06.30 start off about 0800, ( confirm with HSW their times?)

I think they are working on a 4 stop strategy, but I know we can chose from Devil’s bridge, poss sedbergh? Hawes ,Middleham,Thirsk,Pickering, and Scarborough whihc is about every 20 miles if needed.

Other choices are carry your own gels, etc in the van with one main feed in thirsk?

I’ll ring Rod and make sure he is still OK and then we need to get final numbers

Looks a good route, should be a tester!