It was raining heavily as I set off and made the first few miles through narrow country lanes quite tricky. It soon brightened up and the weather stayed good for the rest of the race.

I felt really good all day and I was flying up the climbs, which for the first half of the race were fairly long but not excessively steep so I was able to spin a high cadence which suits me better than having to mash up the short sharp climbs.

I was a little worried during the middle of the ride that I had started too fast but I was able to hold a good pace throughout the ride and at around 20 miles to go I started to crank up the pace and by the end I was hammering as hard as I possibly could.

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At the finish there was a competition where they had a bike set up with a power meter and the aim was to ride as hard as possible for 1 minute then your power to weight ratio was calculated. I had two goes at this. The first I had to stop after 30s because the power meter broke. On the second go I set the highest P/W ratio and this would hold for the rest of the day. I won a helmet :)

On this attempt I also banged my knee off the frame and cut it open and although it was only a small cut blood kept pouring out like crazy, presumably because my HR was pretty much maxed out.

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An excellent race over a very nice course. There were marshals at all the major junctions and they even had Police controlling the traffic at the start.

The best organised event that I have been to so far and also great post race activities (made better by the fact that I won the competition of course:))