Personal bests are the order of the day for VC Baracchi riders

Dennington (photos by Fergus Muir)

Paul Dennington and Paul Hayward of Velo Club Baracchi both obtained personal bests in the CC Breckland 50-mile time trial on the A11 on Saturday.

Hayward

Dennington’s was the more impressive, as his 1-55:24 ride was not only the quicker of the two but he also cut 9:12 from his previous best.

Hayward achieved 1-58:01, a 68-second improvement. Chris Womack of VCB found the last ten miles hard going and his speed dropped from a 24.6mph average to 23.8mph.  Womack reached the finish in 2-06:02, still a good ride.

Womack

Matthew Senter of Team VeloVelocity was the winner with 1-39:38, with team-mate Ben Stancombe second in 1-40:44 and Matt Ivings of Buxton CC third in 1-42:46.

Katja Rietdorf of Born to Bike won for the ladies in 1-56:05 and the team award went to a Buxton CC trio.

John Swanbury and Ali Banks on the tandem set a new personal best time of 21:30 in the East Anglian VTTA event on the A11 between Six Mile Bottom and Four Went Ways, beyond Newmarket.

It was the first time they had touched a 28mph average but the other tandem team ibn the event, Adrian Gorham and Michael Cope of Kettering CC were six seconds faster.

Being somewhat older, the VCB pair had a more favourable age-related standard time to beat and did so by five minutes and 58 seconds, relegating the other team to second place in the veteran competition by just over a minute.

One might have thought that fifty miles in the heat on Saturday would have been enough for Paul Dennington, but he was up the next morning to compete in the Gt Yarmouth CC club 25 on the local 2-lap Somerleyton circuit.

Dennington was joined in the nine-rider event by club-mates Alex and Lucas He, Richard Allen and Paul Reed and it was Lucas He who took the win with 58:01. Other VCB times were Alex He 1-01:47, Dennington 1-02:24, Allen 1-16:13 and Reed DNF.

Nobody was quite sure whether Alex He may have taken a wrong turn and shortened the course but it didn’t seem to matter and Dennington described it as a good event.

In the last GYCC Thursday evening 10 of the year, Dennington finished third in 23:57 and on road bikes Banks recorded 28:11 and Allen 31:07.  Harley Matthews of DAP CC put the win well beyond anyone else’s reach with 21:32, with Simon Scott of Anglia Velo second in 23:05.

Norman Harlow of GYCC has kindly calculated handicaps for the Baracchi Handicap Trophy, the little brother of the Baracchi Trophy that had been won by Dennington and Keith Wink earlier in the season.  He calculated that the handicap version (for a 25-mile two-up time trial) was won by Swanbury and Banks for their ride on that day.