ERC Midweek TT Series Week 16 - Sorry we dont serve food on a Wednesday
21 August 2019
16 weeks in and the wit barrel is being well and truly scraped, so let’s see how this goes.
This is another report where I was not present at the race, apparently it was a grim, wet, miserable evening something I can easily picture as even though I am sat in front of an open fire within a cosy cottage it is in fact bloody miserable here in the Lake District too.
I swapped racing a midweek 10 for driving around rural Cumbria trying to find a restaurant which was open on a Wednesday evening, I don’t want to say my struggle was greater than those racing in the pouring rain but it did take three attempts to find a place & nobody likes getting hangry – I can almost picture you all opening the cases of your miniature violins. I was getting worried at one point; driving on rural roads, in the pouring rain, seeking an establishment which served food – all it needed was some dramatic music from Bernard Herrmann and knowing my luck the next sign I’d have seen was for the “Bates Motel”
Back to Edinburgh and David Lewendon yet again proved that a Giant Trinity Pro is much faster when it’s fully built up rather than in a cardboard box in the loft. He finished first this evening with a time of 22:38. Though more importantly Alan has given David the float to pass onto me next week – place your bets on whether David forgets or not, I know which one I’m putting my money on.
David’s win also meant this was the third week in a row without an Alan Dean victory. Are the wheels falling off? Does this mean there could be a chance for someone to take the Dean Inevitability Trophy – hmmm, nope probably not, Alan hasn’t won these last three weeks because he volunteered this evening, last week Adam Wild raced and the week before was cancelled. Sorry, I was just experimenting with what being a Daily Express reporter feels like, whereby the headline and the substance of the story do not marry up.
Michael Perkins came second with 23:51, Michael has been a consistent presence of producing consistently consistent performances this season so with a smaller field it’s nice to see him pick up 2nd place and 39 points.
Chris Allen was 3rd with 24:29, Chris hasn’t managed to race as much as he’d like this year and well, he sure picked a good week to! Maybe he has a waterproof skinsuit which needed some use.
Shoutout to Chris Borthwick as well who was the fastest road bike of the evening finishing in a time of 28:12. He may have been the only road bike racer tonight but as I have always said, a win is a win, so claim it.
Lewis Hutchinson, Graham Jones and Euan Munro were on National TTT practice tonight. Hopefully they get better weather at Nationals this weekend. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing them and the other ERC teams taking part good luck.
Many thanks to tonight’s volunteers – Alan Dean, Andrew Sinclair and Stuart Lockey. I’m in need of volunteers for the last two weeks, please put your name down, I only have so many amusing memes I can think of creating so if you can save me the pressure of thinking of something then I’d appreciate it.
Cheers,
Dan