Victoria CC 2-Up TTT E1/10A, 28 Aug 2021

Kate and I decided to do a 2-up TT, and not long beforehand we changed to doing it on road bikes as Kate had limited bike storage where she was staying. It was my first TT since early in the season as illness and lack of form had meant taking a break from racing. It felt strange to be back and also to be getting my road bike ready for a TT.

Davey Jones

After some confusion and amusement in finding the HQ, we got signed on and, as the start was about 5 miles from there, the warmup and ride to the start were combined. We arrived with just a few minutes to go before the start, on a rather chilly day with a moderate headwind on the way out. The plan was for me to do 2 minute turns on the front, with Kate doing 30 secs, and take it from there.

We set off and all went pretty well, keeping a good pace into the headwind and trying to pick a suitable place to swap turns, before having a quick rest in Kate’s wheel. After the turn we had the tailwind - not so much of an advantage in a 2-up with Kate getting less protection in the wheel. The pre-arranged signal was for Kate to shout ‘Easy!’ if she needed me to slow, and this worked reasonably well. We finished in just over 26mins, about Kate’s PB for a solo TT on her TT bike, so a decent result.

After the roll back to HQ Kate had planned to do a park run but there wasn’t time to get there so we did a 5km run through a quite line near the TT HQ - not something I’m used to doing but it went quite well, and then was followed by brunch in Saffron Walden. All in all a great morning out!

Tim Phillips