Hawkes rides a good time in the GYCC 10; Gentry has best VCB time

Velo Club Baracchi riders turned out in quite good numbers for Gt Yarmouth CC’s Good Friday open time trial on the A143.

The 10-mile event was based at Wortwell Village Hall and starting not far from Redenhall roundabout, to turn at Clays. There were so many riders it was split into two separate events, one for ladies and juniors and the other for senior and veteran men.

In the first of these, Nicki Hawkes of VCB had a good ride and recorded 26:40. The fastest lady was Anna Muir of Colchester Rovers CC, with Francesca Rust of Team VeloVelocity second in 26:22 and Hawkes third. Hawkes also featured in the “fastest lady on standard” list for the veterans, taking second place in this.

The event was remarkable in that there were no less than nine novice lady riders to boost the numbers, which bodes well for women’s cycling in East Anglia. The fastest of these, Mandy Bunn of West Suffolk Wheelers, achieved 29:58.

Liam Gentry, now fully signed up, was the top VCB rider with 23:03 and the other VCB times were Mark Richards 23:37, George Kerridge 24:07, Chris Womack 25:35 and John Swanbury 26:28.

Swanbury setting off (Photo by courtesy of Fergus Muir)

George Kerridge

The overall winner was Lowestoft’s Joe Skipper, riding for Rock Estate, in 20:46, with Jim Burgess of Anglia Velo second in 21:28, James Trenchard and Andrew Bean both of Team Pedal Revolution third and fourth in in 21:36 and 21:42 respectively.

The fastest junior was Declan Davis of CC Breckland with 24:40 and on the so-called Bidlake System, Team Pedal Revolution, as their third-fastest rider, Mathew Smith, was the quickest third rider of all the teams, with 23:12.

Lee Cook of Rock Estate was their second-fastest rider with 23:04 and Simon Asher’s time was 23:54

It was a brilliant event to start the local season, with good organisation and wonderful cakes afterwards, but the weather was a bit cold and also damp at times, with a side-wind.

Mark Richards and James Moore on the club run (below)

Womack also rode the Stowmarket & District CC 20-mile time trial on Sunday. He felt that he never really got going as well as he can, and achieved 54:57, which was about three minutes slower than in last year’s version of the event, though that had been on a better day.

The winner was Trenchard with 45:06, from Bean (45:34) and Ben Keely of Team VeloVelocity (47:32).

John Thompson rode the “Double Dutch” 208km audax and said, “After two consecutive weekends of bad luck my fortunes lifted in this event on Saturday.”

The start and finish were at Huntingdon with various controls as usual, at Ramsay, March, Nordelph, Kings Lynn, Holbeach St Matthew, Spalding, from where the route went via Thorney and Whittlesea to Huntingdon.

Despite a puncture Thompson completed the course in 11 hours 45 minutes and he was happy with that.

The VCB club run was to Dunwich via Halesworth, Peasenhall, Saxmundaham and Leiston.

Nobby Clarke on the club run. He intends a time trial comeback this year!

John Cooper at the front on the return from Dunwich

Kerridge and Hawkes on the club run