I will be appearing on Oprah to confess that I have no trust in the time keeping from Saturdays Pick’n’mix racing!

The first racing of the year for the club was a low key affair, with 8 riders competing in a mixture of time trial, Italian Pursuit and criterium.

The time trials were a shambolic affair, with the fastest time of the day recorded by Dene Bourke (at 1:40) and slowest by Dave “Ralph” Rubie at 2:15.  A quick check of Strava shown to the officials (which recorded Ralphs time at a blistering 1:57) was ignored.  Everybody else went faster, sure, but due to the protests we can’t remember who did what exactly.

Due to Bourkey’s stunning 1:40, he was selected as the anchor in a two team Italian Pursuit, with Andrew “Swanny” Swan captaining the other team.  The Bourke team included (in initial starting order) Ray Philips, Hayden Freeman, Rob Tindale with Dene on the end to see whether his legs matched the time keepers.  The Swan team included Ralph, Britt Sisson and Peter “Wilko” Wilkinson, with a clear advantage in motivational momentum provided by Wilko.

Ray and Ralph proved fairly evenly matched in the first race, the main difference being a blistering lap by Swanny which put 20 seconds into Bourkey who started his final lap with a slight lead.  The second race had Tindale pushed into the anchor position but even he couldn’t match another flying lap by the club president.  The “best two out of three” series proved a lay down triumph for the Swan team.

The final race was a 10 minute criterium, with Ray and Ralph given a lap to even things out.  Ray chose to hang on to the bunch for as long as possible, while Ralph elected to hang back and do try to do consistent laps to beat the field.  Ray’s efforts were rewarded with a convincing half lap win over the field while Ralph was reeled in, spat out, and left to contemplate what went wrong.  Swanny came second ahead of Britt.

Further protests over the time keeping (thanks Wilf!) proved fruitless.  The only sympathetic ear I can find is Oprah (apparently she’ll talk to anybody with a sob story) so that’s where I’m headed next.