It only took 55 minutes for the team car to wend its way from North Essex to the race HQ at a small industrial estate in the middle of the Suffolk village of Debenham, but in many ways the journey to my first ‘Open’ time trial since 2012 has taken the best part of 3 and a half years…
I’d always struggled with colds and viruses during the winter months, and even during my racing heyday had complained to my GP about my recurring blocked nose each spring and the fact I seemed to invariably pick up two or three chest infections, requiring antibiotics each winter. About 10 years ago I had even asked “might I have asthma?”, had been handed a peak flow meter, and when I pushed the gauge up to over 600 litres per minutes had been assured there was nothing wrong with my lungs…

Despite my optimism in the late summer of 2018, attempts to return to structured training over the winter of 18/19 were thwarted by continuing asthma problems, which again resurfaced in late 2019, ultimately leading to my 5th different steroid inhaler regimen in 3 years by January 2020 following an actual asthma attack. Shortly after that, well, I think Spring 2020 is probably best forgotten all round…
And so, the uninterupted training block for the Stowmarket CC 20TT eventually began in around August 2020, charting a steady development from a loose mix of mountain bike rides, turbo sessions, and even occasional core workouts, which solidified into a reasonably consistent post-Christmas weekly pattern based around classic 2×20 threshold sessions mid-week (in homage to Wednesday night 10TTs), big gear strength efforts on a Friday and some sort of base/endurance ride on the weekend. Rinse and repeat on a 3 week cycle with a recovery week in between.
As a result, quiet confidence was in the air – until 2 days before race day, when I decided to recee the course by car, directeur sportif despondently agreeing it was perhaps a good way to try and get the stagiaries off to sleep, in the back seats. The BS33 might well be in the plains of East Anglia, but the course boasts 240m of climbing and, within the first 5 miles, I was highly disappointed to encounter a 12% gradient sign, in the unfavourable orientation and on the immediate exit to a particularly tight bend which would undoubtably scrub off any attempt to carry speed into the incline. In hindsight, it was useful to know the parcour, but I decided on the subsequent drive back down the A12 that sub-1hr would be a fantastic result, somewhere nearer 1:10 more likely, and anything north of 1:10 an excuse to reverse over my bike in the carpark afterwards…
At 2pm on the 17th, 19 minutes short of my start time, I rolled out from the HQ and made an inexpert effort at a short warm-up (definitely an area I could work on). My legs were tense, a comnbination of the stressed rush to pack the car an hour earlier and nervous anticipation as to the agony to come.
All too quickly, #18 was counted away and I rolled up the starters. Behind me I could practically hear my minute-man, seeded ‘on a 10’ and thefore a bonafide ‘fast man’, licking his lips at how quickly he’d catch me. Time was accelerating: “30 seconds”, “20”, “10” and then “5, 4,3” flew by in the time I took to breathe in and then….. a glacial slowing as a heavy wave of fear rose up through my chest to my shoulders…… “2”…… hours passed as I stared vacantly down the road to the 90 degree left-hand bend…….. “1”…………. “Go!” – and I was off, pushing hard with my right foot and then scrabbling ridiculously to clip in my left, not quite into a sprint but pushing the pedals enough to require a dab on the brakes as I leaned into the first bend.
The first mile and a half of the course descended steeply, down to a gravelly left hander opening across a field of potholes and introducing a mile of constant climbing. I’d already hit my peak heart rate, topping out at 171bpm, and the steeper bottom section was especially tough. My minute-man caught me before i’d reached the next crest, but after that the rolling hills felt pleasingly quick, requiring much less the usual time-trial steady state effort, instead a series of short punchy efforts, each followed by a brief respite on a descent.
Just after 3 miles the left hand bend at Pettaugh (not a ‘turn’, as the minor road feeds into the A-road thanks no doubt to some historical road management incongruity) signalled the start of the sharpest series of climbs, nuanced by tight bends and off-camber surfaces, which segued into a remenant of the Coddenham-Peasenhall Roman road, the tarmac uncompromisingly bludgeoning up two drags, arrow straight. Reader, this hurt. A lot.
At the 6-mile point another gravelly left-hand bend heralded the next phase of the course – a long thin snake of a country road, winding through several small villages, including 4 miles of steady ascent and featuring sporadic brutal potholes (kindly highlighted by the organisers with lurid yellow paint). As the headwind erroded by energy several more riders passed – each with generous words of encouragement – with the possible exception of my 11 minute man, who was but a blur as he powered to a course record at an incredible average speed of over 29mph….
An old clubmate had followed me off the start line a few minutes after 14:19, and I’d established the mental aim to keep him behind me until the northernmost part of the course, the final junction at 15 miles. To my statisfaction Occold came and went without a blue and white rider passing me but, despite sometime of a tailwind for the first time, by now any vague indication of souplesse was gone, my legs were stiffening with each pedal stroke and the unwanted catch came with a couple of miles left to ride. The road had returned to the same lumpen pattern as the first section, juddering downwards on broken tarmac, kicking up past a roadside pond and a huge fallen tree, winding over rolling terrain and false horizons, before another short Romanesque dip, down over the River Deben and up alongside a cydery.
After another speed sapping S-bend a simple road sign provided the penultimate shot in my arm as it declared: “Debenham 1“. I gritted my teeth and pushed on as the road wound along the river. With less than hundred yards to go a gaggle of visi-vests emerged into view on the left from behind a hedge and I committed a cardinal TT sin of a final ‘head-down’ effort; looking up at the last, and just in time to jink right and avoid taking out the time keeper.
The result: 1:01:20, sore lungs and 24 hours of aching cough. Without question, this was a painful experience. And also vindication of the ambition to return to racing, a benchmarch to work from and the establishment of a big window for improvement. I’m way off having a realistic tilt at my bête noire being as it’s only a few weeks award for the 2021 running, but I was almost pleased to hear that the 2021 edition of the Buxton CC ‘Good Friday’ Mountain Time Trial has been postponed to early October. Hopefully that will provide the coda to a gradual year of improvement and allow me to reprise the hilarity of my 2012 experience at the race this autumn.