Personal bests and a record for VCB riders in CC Breckland 50

Swanbury and Banks at the roundabout (Photo by Fergus Muir)

All the Velo Club Baracchi riders in Sunday’s CC Breckland open 50-mile time trial on the A11 came away with personal bests.

Mark Richards only missed out on a club record by nine seconds with his 1-52:47 top-twenty result and James Moore 1-57:06 was a strong ride in the top thirty.

John Swanbury and Ali Banks on the tandem took over seven minutes off their initial time set last year, to finish in 1-54:28 for a new club 50-mile tandem record, Veteran Time Trials Association East Anglian Group age record and also (subject to verification) a new VTTA national age record. The other tandem team in the event did not start.

Two other VCB riders had also pulled out, but there were over 80 riders from far and wide in the event. The top time was 1-40:08 ridden by BBAR challenger Adam Topham of High Wycombe CC, who had been looking for 1-38:04 or better to overtake Richard Bideau of Pendle Forest in this year’s competition.

Topham had won the British Best All-rounder competition in the last three years but will have to settle for runner-up this year. As a consolation his time became the new course record on this version of the B50/18 course from Besthorpe. The ladies’ winner was Lucy Gossage of Cambridge CC in 1-54:56.

Peter Harrison of GS Henley was second in 1-44:20 with Harry Walton of Cheltenham & County CC third in 1-47:07. One of the faster reasonably local riders was Steve Gorbutt of Diss CC in 1-48:53 for seventh.

It was a fine morning, which started too cold for some, but it warmed up a bit. The high pressure weather was one of the reasons Topham gave for not quite reaching a 30mph average. The faults in the road surface are not a great help either.

Paul Hayward of Rock Estate achieved 1-59:08 and VCB’s second-claim lady rider Jenny Anderson, riding for Gt Yarmouth CC, had a 2-18:17 result.

The handicap results later showed Hayward as the handicap winner and Richards in seventh place.

There are two more weekends of local time trials (including this weekend) before the season finishes.