Moulineers in the Meldons

Recently, Maddy and I took to the hills of the Meldons to try and be speedy in the pursuit of the fastest time. I think some people call it a time trial. We both rode last year too, but the route was significantly different due to road works, so there can be no comparison of times.

This year, I rode fastest of all the fearless females (I added fearless just for an extra ‘f’...it’s probably inaccurate, I was probably fearful at some point*), and I believe Maddy rode 8 minutes 47 seconds faster than 2010 (it was the same route then), which is pretty good, I’d say. Although I might have got that wrong because it’s late, I’m supposed to be revising so my brain is full of meaningless phrases and words which I’ve read today, and maths has never been my strong point. Unless any prospective employers are reading this, in which case, although I have never pursued maths as a direct subject, I have always performed strongly in both exam and project based tasks. Especially if my friend Mary is sitting next to me. And Zoe is sitting next to her.

It was quite fun actually, I got passed by my minute man after about a minute, but I used his disappearing figure to pace myself up the first climb. The main road section was super fast, tail wind, but difficult to tell if you were actually trying because even if you’d free wheeled you’d probably still have been moving quite fast. The last climb was horrible for me, and there was a little cyclocross section where we had to go off road because of a broken cattle grid. I reckon Maddy probably got a couple of seconds on me there. I was bumping along the un-surfaced section thinking things about southern softies, them not doing TTs offroad down south, should we be doing TTs off road up here? Am I going to crash into that sheep? Are deep section wheels like this made for this terrain? Are aero bars? Should I wear an aero helmet next time I do cyclocross? Before it was back onto the tarmac, head wind slog, draggy uphill, I felt as though I was doing about 4mph. I probably was.

The finish is up a little hill to a big house in Eddleston, I went too hard too soon and cracked about 50 metres before the finish, which is where Ali (to whom both Maddy and myself both owe having well-maintained, actually built up from a pile of parts, bikes to ride at all) passed me for 11 minutes...I’ll take that.

*See section in paragraph three with regards to sheep.