Race Report – St Austell Wheelers Open 10
St Austell Wheelers Open 10 – Conrad Moss
Wednesday evening was the SAW 10 on the S100 course in Cornwall.
My form has started to come good the last couple of weeks, as I’ve introduced a fair bit of top end into my schedule, and after my 19.28 in my own event a couple of weeks ago I’ve been hitting it pretty hard, and feeling fairly good.
The weather for the event looked to be good – warm temperatures and a light cross wind of around 8 mph, which is neither here nor there. If there was just 1 small thing that wasn’t perfect, then that was my start time of 20.09 meaning empty roads. Don’t get me wrong I don’t like racing in traffic at all, but the impact on speed is fairly substantial. You just can’t have it both ways, as typically as a scratch man you start last meaning little traffic, but on windier days you ride in the better weather conditions – that’s time trialling, and I guess we’re all looking for those ‘perfect’ conditions.
At 1900 I started my hour warm up. It was warm and so the intensity was low – not much more than a light spin to raise a sweat whilst taking on plenty of fluid.
20.09 arrived and I was off. Quickly into my stride to the first roundabout, knocking off the speed before kicking hard onto the dual carriageway and settling into my rhythm. My legs felt good, power was high and I was quickly into the 11, only really changing gear on the long drags to keep the rhythm high. I caught my minute man at around 5 miles on the climb to the turn, and had a pretty clear run around the turn, before rejoining the carriageway. The next mile was quick, but as expected the following, and last 3 miles were fairly stiff in places, and I had to dig really deep to maintain my speed.
I stopped the Garmin on 19.20 – 31 MPH, chopping 40 seconds off my own course record, and taking the win by just shy of a minute from Sandy Gourley, Tom Gilbert, Gavin McDougall, and our own Andrew Perkins were grouped closely behind, occupying 2nd – 5th places.
