WELSH OPEN NATIONAL 50M CHAMPS - Abergavenny - 29th Sept 2019 - last race of the 2019 season 🙌🎉

4th Overall * 1st on Standard (Welsh National Gold)

Well, what a weekend….what awful weather, for a major sporting event, and especially for a major Championship (a dig at the World Champs in Yorkshire where the weather was awful). 🌧 💨 

Yes, the Welsh National 50 Mile TT Championships from Abergavenny 😎 – with a continuous deluge throughout the night, a little concerned that parking my car near the banks of the local river at the normally gorgeous Ross-on-Wye wasn’t the best idea….fortunately although swollen, the river was intact and so was my car the following morning!

Beneficially for the race, the deluge had been replaced by ‘only’ sporadic showers, but the wind was rather blustery to say the least, with copious amounts of surface water.

This was my season’s final race on a near 6 month season, I suspected finishing on a ‘50’ miler could be a challenge…and so it proved, holding the expected target power for 35 miles, but physically deteriorated badly thereafter, with of course (and those that race will know) a bigger psychological battle to then try and minimise any losses – somehow in the main I succeeded, by fvck it was most unpleasant, somehow recording only 16 secs slower on my second lap…with a finishing time of 1-47-22, bang on 28mph average.

Annoyingly in 4th position overall – narrowly missing the podium, but as a usual bonus won the Vets “standard” gold (age adjusted) National medal.

Driving north, I eventually caught up the previous night’s deluge, apparently this affected some other minor Championship held much further north, but loads apparently dropped out of that one, lesser types…I never knew? 😉😜

Back home, immediately on to Operation “Weight-Gain” starting with a few pints 🍻 of the tremendous Abbeydale Brewery’s “Deception” (as a “recovery” drink of course) together with the largest burger on the menu – all thoughts of racing at last fast subsiding…

Looking forward to some scheduled R&R now in the near future…from gigging in Nottingham (the musical and comic legend John Otway) to a “beer and walking” weekend in the Brecon Beacons…and already made a return to some mountain biking, after a five year hiatus...where I can only get better, and surely it has to be less muddy! 😎

 — in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire.

[Referring to this being the last race of the season, so happy to allow weight to gain, after controlling my 78ish-kg race weight and to recoup some social activities!]