With over 330m of climbing on each 11 mile lap, the Buxton Mountain Time Trial was always going to be a real test of how well Mark’s winter training had (or had not) gone.
Despite the severity of the course, the sunshine and relatively mild weather meant most of the 180 entrants turned up to the second race of the National RTTC Classic Time Trial Series, where Mark tested his winter training to take Veteran’s Gold.
Mark – The main event was obviously the Veteran’s category, with yours truly managing to beat race one winner Ian Holbrook. The numbers seemed to be about right, normalized power was 342 watts, which is in line with my 1 hour FTP of 345. With hindsight maybe I should have gone for a deep section instead of a disc in the rear, you get strong crosswinds on the A53 and I had to drop onto my base bars a few times to keep the bike in a straight line. After crashing in last year’s event I decided to take the descent very steady, basically not pedalling! Probably didn’t lose that much time as my top speed was still around 50mph. Winners for the overall competition are the riders with the highest aggregate total points gained from up to 4 races from the 6 race series. I’ll be going for the overall, but due to date clashes will be only doing the minimum 4 events, so I’ll need to get good results in each race!
A huge thank you to all my sponsors, your help is much appreciated.