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End of season brings a boom in time trials

27/ 9/2008

WHATEVER it was that prompted a downturn in time trial entries seems to have miraculously evaporated at the back end of the racing season.

Fields seemed back to normal in last weekend’s events involving West Pennine Road Club members, and adding to the trend, the club’s last promotion of the year, the 10-mile event on the A6 at Garstang this afternoon, has a total of 93 riders on the start sheet.

It was a 10 on a decidedly faster course that attracted riders to Levens last Saturday for Wigan Wheelers’ event.

To accommodate a greater number of riders the field was divided into huge senior, seniors and women, and junior sections.

Pennine’s best rider in the senior section was Mark Isherwood whose time of 21.50 seemed to indicate that he is rapidly getting back to where he left off prior to his temporary absence from the sport a year or so ago.

Mark’s father Dave, riding for team Swift /Allsports in the veteran group, saw his 21.10 marginally bettered by one second by West Pennine’s virus suffering Mark Hulme.

As Isherwood found out, a second is a long time in a time trial.

Sel Ives sprinted in to a time of 24.00.

A 23.59 would have looked much better, and the click of a finger could have been a little slow, but the timekeepers are always right, (and totally unbiased) especially when they come from the ranks of the West Pennine club.

Back in harness after a week or so lay-off Pennine’s Mick Standring failed to take advantage of the speedy course and finished with a disappointing 26.07.

The winner of the senior section was Preston Wheeler’s Jeff Wright with his 19.35, a time almost matched by the 19.37 from Shetland Wheelers’ Carlos Riise in the veteran group.

Kev Shand’s racing season started way back in March. Now, countless miles later, his legs appear to have reached a definitive number and cease to reward.

The fact that age just might have something to do with it is dismissed out of hand , by the Pennine veteran it is.

On Sunday morning Shand faced the time keeper for the Yorkshire Road Club 50, feeling well up for the time trial, both in his head and in the legs.

It didn’t last.

At 25 miles he was well down on his ambitious schedule and eventually finished the event in North Yorkshire with a time of 2-1.28, one that hundreds of club racers would be more than happy with.

The winner at Topcliffe was that remarkable all-rounder from Port Sunlight Wheelers, Andy Wilkinson who blasted round the course to the tune of 1 hour 41 mins 44 secs, almost five minutes clear of second placed Bradley Johnson.

With the season’s end almost in sight Daniel Shand’s mixed fortunes showed a detectable upswing on Sunday in a 174km race in southern Belgium.

Based at Hotton in the Ardenne region the Grand Prix Joseph Bruyere Hotton was a severe test for all, as the riders tackled the far from easy wooded slopes.

As the peloton split, with a sizable group in the break and several splinter groups chasing, Shand in the colours of his De Sprinters Malderen team, was left with the task of mopping up remnants of the battle ahead.

At the finish he led a 19-strong chasing group, only 30 seconds short of his quarry, to finish in 69th place, 9 minutes and 22 seconds down on the winner Thomas De Gendt of the Cycling Team Davo.