While Holly Harris, Dave Munday, Phil Thomas, Bill Mara and their teams of helpers were battling the Grafton to Inverell on Saturday, there was another, slightly shorter, battle of the minds taking place on the Long Swamp time-trial course.

Seventeen riders showed up in breezy conditions for the hilly 15km out-and-back event, the first ITT for 8 months – the last one being part of the 2016 ITT Championships. Included in the mix was new club member Chris Belson who posted a respectable 27m:40s first time out.

Following on the back of the Invergowrie Road Race and some tougher races in recent weeks, riders were in great form with PBs being broken across the board. Although Mick Harris was by far the fastest on the day, clocking a blistering 22m:55s at an average of just under 40kph on a conventional bike, special mention must go to Andy Robb who recorded a 24m:07s in his first ITT event with the club. While we’re on the topic, although we don’t ordinarily heap praise up on him, Kirky also deserves a mention this week. By his own admission the ITT isn’t his favourite discipline (“I beep hate those beep, beep things”), but he put that behind him this weekend, knocking 1m:46s off his previous PB.

The breezy and hilly conditions didn’t really suit the specialist bikes but Col and Johnny looked and sounded good on their TT rigs, Col showing once again that age doesn’t need to be a barrier to performance, crossing the line in 24m:15s, just 7s down on a PB. Note we’ve also started to record Bike Type in the race results page data so if you want to get into the detail for historical performance times, from now on you can.

Well done also to Jacqui King (PB), Emily Wooster (first official ITT), Captain Creagan (PB), Richard Wilkinson (PB) and in-form Vice-Captain Livings (PB).

Thanks to everyone who competed on the weekend, congratulations Mick Harris and particular thanks to Wilf for running the race and doing the signs. Next weekend is the Nemingha-Nundle race in Tamworth so there will be no official ACC club racing until 27th May when we get back into the Road Racer season with Round 5 on Dangarsleigh. Keep an eye on the website and calendar for that one as it looks like council roadworks are about to start on the Peterson’s section so we may need to switch courses.

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