After the early wakeup of 8am and rushing to Josh’s as Lewis is always running late, they struggled to assemble the bike rack attached to the rear of his car. Not entirely convinced they had done it properly, they set off to Nottingham while religiously checking the rear-view mirror to see if they were still attached.
Tasha and lead supporter Albert (who used the excuse of BUCS sprint triathlon the next day to avoid having the take part in this event although most of us there were doing both competitions) got there much earlier as the women were going off first. A commanding performance gave her a final time of 24:10 and 15th position.
Next up was Lewis and while he thought we were arriving with plenty of time to spare, after picking up race numbers, he realised he had only 10 minutes to get from Race HQ to the start line as well as get my bike and kit on. After a brief 90 second warmup he was off. While charging round to go faster than expected by setting a time of 27:04, the rider that set off behind him on a TT bike and TT position (not looking up) had only just overtaken him then managed to go straight into the biggest pothole on course. Both his front and rear tyres blew out and he had the roughly 3km walk of shame to the finish line.
Jack was up next and he smashed round to finish in a time of 25:58 with a very impressive final sprint to the line. Josh, with his aero socks pulled up to his knees, flew round to get a time of 23:24. Louis destroyed the course with an average power of 385 Watts to get a time of 22:06. The one and only Dan Lord was the final rider off from Warwick – the only one capable of dethroning Louis as the fastest Warwick participant and the odds looked stacked against him with comparatively less training done this winter than years previous. However, no one should have doubted him as he finished with a time of 21:34 and 24th position with one of the quickest if not the quickest road bike times.
Now it was time to head back and get some food en route. The rendezvous spot was the Leicester North East Services which had plenty of great options – while some chose Burger King Lewis chose KFC with the £8.99 option for 20 hot wings, 1.5L of Pepsi and plenty of fries. He couldn’t finish it but alas it tasted great.
The drive back couldn’t go without mention of some very questionable driving. The culprits won’t be named but she was doing at least 60 in a 50mph zone. A big thank you to Dan, Tasha and Josh for helping to drive people up and everyone else for their support by the finish line. Until next time.