After a rather chilly ride down to work, I was pleased that the evening was pleasantly warm, albeit with a stiff breeze.  Still experimenting with routes from the OU over to Stony Stratford, on this occasion, I zoomed up V10 and then along H3.  Actually the best route so far, in terms of avoiding the need to use redways and the busier MK roads.

I'm never too keen on the Stony Stratford course, mostly due to the lengthy climb up to Nash, which I usually take in too high a gear.  Tonight was no exception.  The return leg was pretty quick, as I'm happier riding that section in the dry.

The event was the third round of the club league, so I was reasonably happy with my third place (second NBRC rider), though the margin between Tony and me was a bit big for comfort! Interestingly, this event hd more riders than next Sunday's North Middx & Herts CA '50'! 

It's been some time since I commented on the dreadful Phorm system of deep packet inspection, and BT's intention to use the Phorm system to snoop on your browsing habits and supply targeted advertising.  (Recall that Phorm are a known spyware maker - in their previous incarnation of 121Media).

Alexander Hanff, who has made a series of appearances on the media to make robust criticisms of the system has posted a detailed description here. The day that BT implement this, I will leave them for another (Phorm-free) ISP.

BT Retail, who manage the ISP business have behaved quite appallingly over the matter, ignoring (and even trying so suppress) discussion on their forums -  all the signs are that they are holding fire until the furore dies down.  We should all try to ensure that this doesn't die down.  Visit BadPhorm for more information.

This was my first '50' since the 2006 season.  When leaving the house for the event, I was fairly optimistic, but upon arriving at Tempsford I realised that the northbound legs would be tough going due to the head wind. Anyway. onward I rode, fuelled by the knowledge that this was the event nominated as the North Bucks '50' championship event - one other NBRC rider had entered.

The start for this version of the F1/50 lies quite close to the Tempsford flyover, so pretty quickly I found mself roaring down the sliproad onto the A1.  As expected, the ride to the first turn, at the Sandy RAB was splendidly quick.  Unfortunately, once I'd rounded the turn and  started on the long leg north, it was apparent just how tough it would be (I don't know what my average was, but I saw 22mph quite a lot).  I grovelled northward, across the Black Cat RAB, to the turn at Buckden, where I caught number 55, a rider  apparently on the comeback trail, and riding a bike with a single speed freewheel and no tribars.  This seemed to spur him on a bit, it took me to the Sandy RAB to shake him off (and even then not by much judging from the final result).  Number 60 caught me for 4 minutes just before crossing the Black Cat RAB - at somewhat less than the halfway mark.  (My split for the first 25 miles was just sub-hour).  The southbound leg was pretty quick, but being the indomitable soul I am, I wasn't too worried about the second northbound leg.  Well, actually it was just as horrible as the first time I headed north!

On the face of it, the riders were presented with an appalling set of conditions - the warm and sunny weather we had for the previous week or two had vanished, replaced by cold and grey conditions, with a very strong wind and the threat of rain.  To add to this, I had a real lack of enthusiasm and couldn't stop yawning as I lined up at the start.

Mind you, having Tony Parks a minute behind me was sure to spur me on.  I nearly got tipped off by the wind catching the front trispoke just after the start, but after that I had no trouble.  As expected the wind assisted me down the main road towards Chicheley, but more astonishingly, it seemed to help most of the way back to North Crawley.  That mystifies me!  Anyway, I was pretty pleased - not only did the rain hold off, but I limited my losses to Tony Park to 30 seconds, which was pretty good given his form lately, but I improved about 11 seconds from three weeks ago.  An encouraging event...next race is the Norlond '50' on the F1/50 on Sunday morning - this will be my first 50 since the 2006 season!

There's a report from Tony over at the NBRC web page.

Both the Open University and Oxford University websites have their own versions of the press release. 

Lynne had a TV interview with BBC Oxford yesterday, while I had a radio interview yesterday and another scheduled for tomorrow (broadcast for today and tomorrow respectively).

Our paper in Aging Cell describing the identification and characterisation of a Drosophila orthologue of the exonuclease function of WRN is now available online, and open access.

This was an afternoon event on the hottest day of the year so far, hot enough that I found it rather oppressive. By the finish, my HR had climbed to some pretty unreasonable levels.

The F12/10 runs on the A505 Leighton Buzzard bypass, and while not a dual carriageway it is a pretty wide road.  The surface is a little rough and fractures in places, and the road undulates quite a bit.  The course suffers a bit from being quite exposed to crosswinds, though this wasn't an issue for this event, as it was virtually still.  There have been traffic management changes since I last rode the course, with increased traffic levels through the Grovebury Road industrial estate where the HQ was, and on the section of road where we normally warm up - possibly due to the new Stoke Hammond bypass road.

I rode to and from the event, and I must be on a roll as I had no punctures.  During the race, I quickly dropped into a good rhythm, but after 5 or 10 minutes the heat began to get to me.  I had a clear run through the Billington Road roundabout in both directions and had no trouble at the turn.  I finished with 22:45, which I think was 9th.  Tim Carter and Tony Parks r=finished in 21:27 and 21:50 respectively, giving the North Bucks the team prize.

I had a visit from a BBSRC Press Office person on Wednesday 8th May.  (The BBSRC are the UK Research Council that fund my current research into ageing, using Drosophila as a model system) This was to record some video footage to accompany a press release concerning a paper that will be published online on Monday 12th May.  She went on to visit my collaborator Lynne the following morning.

It was quite a surreal situation - being filmed in the lab while people carried on working.  I imagine the raw footage is very funny, with all the false starts and stops - the difficulty was in stopping myself from using technical terms that would be opaque to the general public.  Typically I'd be on a bit of a roll, then suddenly grind to a halt having uttered a word like "phenotype" or similar.  I have to say that the BBSRC person was most helpful and sympathetic (I presume she deals with inarticulate and camera-shy scientists on a regular basis!).

I picked this story up from Pharyngula.  The crazed Islamic creationist Harun Yahya, real name Adnan Oktar has been banged up for three years by an Istanbul court (Reuters).

Oktar runs a bizarre publishing enterprise that sends out huge and lavishly illustrated but bizarrely argued tomes vainly trying to discredit evolution.  The strategy seems to be to compare fossils with extant species, claim no morphological difference between them, then state this proves evolution to be false.  As a wild-eyed strategy this is rather amusing, such as the comparison of a spider crab with a spider.  He is certainly taxonomically challenged.  Perhaps I'll scan some examples later...I have a copy of one of these volumes that was sent to me a year ago...

He's been convicted of "creating an illegal organization for personal gain".

We had a lovely summery spring evening for this event, one of our interclub events between the North Bucks Road Club and the A5 Rangers, and it brought out a field of 32 riders.  There was quite a stiff easterly breeze, which made me rather apprehensive about likely times on this course, which is not exactly a dragstrip!', '

In the event however most, if not all, riders recorded improvements, with some particularly strong rides.  I was pleased to improve by nearly half a minute to 22:56.  The breeze actually helped us up the hill to the DC section and up to the turn.

Tony's official writeup is here.