VTTA '10' 4th May 2025

After a spell of fine sunny and warm weather, this event took place on a windy and cold morning - conditions to which I'd become unaccustomed! As usual for events on the F11/10 course, I rode out to the HQ, a distance of about 24 miles (including a ride from the HQ to the start) - this was rather good as I mostly had a rising tailwind, and it offers an excellent warmup. I was a bit concerned about how strong the wind would be and its impact on my ride, as I had decided to ride my deep section front wheel.

I reached the HQ in good time, but by the time I rode up to the start, it seemed to be even colder. I decided to keep my woolly gloves on! The F11/10 runs along the A41 as it bypasses Tring and Aston Clinton. It has the notable feature of a descent that riders don't ride back up, so it is usually considered a fast course. But in my experience this depends quite a bit on the wind direction (though the top riders don't seem so badly affected). The course is also notable for pretty poor road surface, with much of it very rough. The organisers had noted several new pothols and flagged them up with fluorescent paint. As it turned out, this worked well.

Starting on the slip road, I got up to speed quite quickly for the first 2 miles into a side-head wind, then I zoomed off down an exit slip to the first turn, a complicated affair with two roundabouts (where riders frequently leave the course inadvertently). Entry to the first of these roundabout is poorly sighted, and for safety's sake, I always slow right down. Then of course getting back up to speed through the roundabouts abd back up to the dual carriageway takes some effort. A further 2 miles through horrible road surface and avoiding the potholes took me to the top of the descent. Here things got a a bit twitchy with an unhelpful sidewind catching my front wheel. The result of this was that I found it hard to keep the speed up and take advantage of the descent.

The race just kept on feeling hard from there, round the second turn and to the finish. I finished in 23:04, quite a bit slower than I'd hoped for, but I think quite in keeping with the conditions on the day. Here's an illustration of the wind conditions via intervals.icu (and based on local weather forecasts). You can see why the wind direction never felt particularly helpful!

Complete results via ResultSheet. Data from my ride via intervals.icu (click to enlarge):