Wednesday saw Alice and Emma Codling racing at Lotus. Alice rode a brilliant race, and the GYCC group kept a fast pace at the front so as to remove any slower or more dangerous riders from the bunch. The eleven laps came down to another sprint into a head wind. Alice, with her junior gearing, was able to get a good cadence, taking first place, and, as she said, if two riders directly in front of her hadn’t have crashed, she would have possibly finished in the top ten out of the men as well. Alice beat Isla Rush who had been dropped from the E123s and who is also in the same team as Laura Trott. Emma’s strong riding saw her take second place.
On Sunday, the girls went to Ipswich for grass track racing. Alice managed third in the omnium and Emma came further down the table, unfortunately not being certain of her position due to an error with the results. The racing format was sprint based, which was not ideal, but Alice came third in each race. The three lap time trial, being Alice’s favourite event, ended with her in second place. The weather started quite overcast, but thankfully as the racing went on, the rain stopped and there were glimpses of blue sky during the painful 8km scratch race at the end.
On Thursday evening, there were perfect conditions for riders of the weekly club 10. 27 riders signed on to try to give their best in the Race of Truth. It looked as if VCB would dominate the event and take the top 3 placings. Mark Richards, using his new time trial bike for the first time, took first place with a time of 22:13 and James Moore (VCB) took second place with a time of 23:55. Jonny Hawes, however, put in a course personal best, knocking 27 seconds off his previous best. His time went down to 24:35 and this kept VCB rider Nick Esser, with a very respectable 24:38, out of the top 3. Both Johnny Quinn and Mark Peach improved on their course personal best by 22 seconds to 26:51 and 26 seconds to 27:52 respectively. GYCC riders, Julian Claxton and Bryan Averre, both riding the course for the first time, finished in 25:12 and 28:02 respectively. GYCC’s Kersten Langer was the fastest female of the night, completing the course in 29:40.
On Saturday night, three GYCC riders tackled Chase the Rising Sun: a 100 mile race against the sun from Hunstanton to Southwold, with the aim of completing the distance before sunrise. Riders, Neil Sibley, Stephen Swallow and Jamie Roberston, left Hunstanton at 9.30pm. All riders were very respectful of each other, especially as some of the roads were quite slippery and gritty in places. Although this was a night ride, there were quite a lot of people supporting through the more populated areas. The three riders managed to dodge the bad weather, missing most of the downpours, but they finally got caught in a big rainstorm just before reaching Lowestoft. They did, however, all reach Southwold by sunrise. All in all, this was a very well organised sportive put on by CSUK and an excellent night was had by all.
