Race Report – Perky takes TT win on the S26
Race Report – Sid Valley 10
10th May 2017
Perky’s 2017 Campaign Underway
With my early season disrupted by holidays, work events and sinus problems, it’s been a slow start to 2017. After a handful of lacklustre TT results, it was nice to get a first win chalked up.
I much prefer evening events to early morning starts, so I was looking forward to this Wednesday night effort on the S26/10 course on the heavy roads between Feniton and Honiton. I’d ridden the same course 3 days earlier when I’d tried a new pacing schedule – it had gone badly wrong and I’d only just scraped into the top ten. However, I’d managed to string together a few decent weeks of uninterrupted training and my underlying figures were promising, suggesting that I was capable of a good ride – even if I hadn’t at that point, delivered one!
On the evening before the event I opted to do the chaingang on my TT bike, I figured it was a good way to push myself to some max efforts in the aero position and it also enabled me to get used to a new position following a few tweaks since Sunday’s disastrous ride. The session did the trick because on the Wednesday evening I was able to comfortably stay ‘in tuck’ and in my warm-up, was knocking out some very promising wattage figures.
Feeling confident, I went out hard against a slight headwind, recording a season’s best 368 watts for the first ten minutes; the return route loses altitude which means it’s hard to lay down power, but it’s good for building speed. I concentrated on holding a tight aero position and pushing hard over the one draggy section between miles 7 and 8, recording over 31mph for the return leg to clock a finish time of 20:41 and a season’s best 20-minute power.
The time was enough to give me 1st place by 5 seconds from Tavistock Wheeler’s in-form Gavin MacDougall and 20 seconds from Revo Racing’s Lubos Obornik.
Simon Medlyn was in at the kill too recording a PB of 21:46 for 6th place, with Dom Start also clocking a PB of 22:52 for 14th. Other MDCC riders featured too – Kevin Weymouth 23:15, Mark Sander 23:34, Ian Deakin 24:17 and Sarah Lakey 25:39.
It’s the crit’ bike for the next couple of outings before the MDCC 10 on the faster S4 course.
