Joanna Cebrat – 12 Hour Time Trial

Boots & Spurs 12 HOUR TIME TRIAL RACE REPORT

BY JOANNA CEBRAT FROM BURY CLARION

Having completed a 100 mile TT mid July I decided to give a 12hTT a go a month later. With no specific training and pretty clueless of what to expect I chose to sign up for the RTTC 12TT Nationals hoping that a big event would be more entertaining and being held in Norfolk it will be pancake flat. The first one was a good guess the 2nd was not. The event was really well organised and marshalled, credit to CC Breckland. They attracted an extremely good field of 113 with national and world TT champions, it was great to see all the PRO-support set ups. I decided to use the neutral support team for unsupported riders who were based on a big roundabout where all the circuits met, they were brilliant! I still had to carry my puncture repair kit and a pump as nobody was driving behind me. My bike set up was an “Audax style” with 2 Garmins, a big frame bag and 2 bottles. By the way how many watts/seconds did it cost me guys?

As soon as I set off it turned out that Norfolk is not as flat as I expected and over the first 100 miles I climbed more than during the 100 mile TT in Keswick! I soon discovered that the biggest challenge of the day was to be the weather. As a lighter rider I do struggle in winds. We had over 20mph with occasional strong gusts, a big headwind riding west. It was pretty cruel… especially going over the exposed A11 bridges. When I tried riding out of the saddle uphill I nearly came off! it was so gusty... but I didn’t give up. The 2nd challenge was circuit number 2 which contained about 10 miles of bumpy concrete, this we repeated 5 times. It felt like cycling over speed bumps spaced 2 metres apart, one of my bottles popped out of the cage. Circuit 2 killed my neck and my bum and at just under the 200miles I felt that my knees had had enough and that I wouldn’t be able to push anymore without risking injury. For the last 2 hours it was a battle of mind versus body. Circuit 3 was the finishing circuit where Marshals are placed evenly every mile. This was a bumpy countryside road with two longish uphill struggles which made my bum and knees even more unhappy! But I just kept going, rather slowly at that point, but there was no way I was pulling out! I wasn’t the only struggler though! As I rode around I was happy to see my partner Mark hanging around the HQs so I knew that I when I finished I would have a lift home! The supporters and marshals along the finishing circuit were just awesome and kept us going with many kind words and cow bells. Most of the spectators had the start sheet so they could match race numbers with names! Hearing “Go Go Jo” was very good! I stopped my Garmin making sure the marshals noted that I had finished as having a DNF after all that would be terrible! As I stopped and put my foot down my leg went wobbly and I fell off the bike into stinging nettles! The new kind of pain was welcome as it took my mind away from all the others!