Willesden Cycling Club

The Willesden CC hold a Monthly General Meeting (MGM) on the first Tuesday of each month. It is held at the Wembley Club rooms from 9pm afterwards. It is a good chance to find out what is happening in the club and to help shape its future. You also get to eat cake and drink tea.
The main points from last Tuesday’s MGM were as follows –

Subscriptions.
IMPORTANT – There are a number of members who have forgotten to renew their membership for 2008. Please contact Gladys Purdy ASAP to ensure your continuing membership.

Track
The WCC Track Championships will be held at Calshot on 21st September 2008. 10:00am to 1:00pm. Organiser – Keith Wilmot

Road Racing
The Willesden Road Race will be held on 14th September. All WCC members are expected to attend with either with a number on their back or sporting a Marshall’s tabard.
Organiser Jumbo James

Audax
The Willesden are organising 19 Audax events this year.
The first of these took place at the end of January, namely The Willy Warmer (215km) and The Little Willy (125km). It attracted over 65 riders and raised over £120 for the club. Well done Paul Stewart.
Two teams are entering this years Easter Arrow. This is an interesting team event finishing in York. Teams start from all over the country on Good Friday with aim of seeing who can rack up the greatest distance in 24 hours. The minimum distance is 360 kms. The two Willesden Teams are captained by Mark Brooking and Paul Stewart.

Reliability Ride
The Willesden round of the Chiltern Classics will be held on Sunday 24th Feb 08. Start will be at 10:00am from the Scout Hut, Community Close, Ickenham.
Organisers: John Williams/ Giovanni La Brummi

Social
The Isle of Wight 100km Randonnee will be taking place on the first May Bank holiday. Exact details to be announced.

Coaching
The Willesden have an impressive number of coaches in the club who are very active across all areas in cycling. There are some very interesting developments about to take place that will raise the profile of the Willesden CC coaching squad. So watch this space and support your coach.

John Davies

The Willy Warmer (215km) and Little Willy (125km) on the 26th January are the first events of the year from the Willesden calendar of events. This was the second year for the Willy Warmer ,and the first time out for its young friend, The Little Willy.

The Willy Warmer took much the same route as last year although we swapped the frosty Chilterns in favour of a more direct route to Pangbourne through Marlow and Henley for some Jolly Good Coffee before heading off across the rolling Newbury Downs to Hungerford. Then on across the flatlands of the Test valley before heading home for that final climb back to Chalfont.

The Little Willy followed the same fast route down to Pangbourne but came back over the Chiltern hills of Turville Heath and Fingest. The Little Willy was somewhat over distance and mindful of possible bad weather conditions (and riders who might not yet have reacquired their sleek racing form after their Christmas breaks) the route sheet allowed for Turville Heath to be bypassed for a fast ride home. Happily we had a balmy January day and as far as I know only one rider took the short cut home (and that was by mistake!).

32 riders completed the Willy Warmer route, a similar number to last year, with 35 riders on the Little Willy which was a great success in doubling the number of riders on the day. I’d also like to offer thanks to Peter Turnball who helped with the route checking, Phil Chadwick of AnotherCyclingForum for manning the Hungerford Control.

Paul Stewart
WCC Audax and Touring Secretary

Hillingdon winter series 26/1

After winning the Willesden Road race trophy at the club dinner I thought it best to do the decent thing and actually race. I’ve had a few weeks away from racing to get some miles in my legs so whilst I wasn’t expecting to be very sharp I was hoping my fitness level would be OK.

It was a very mild January day although very windy, and there was a huge turnout of riders (60+) for the 11th race of the series.

The race started off as it was to continue with several of the top riders trying their best to get away from the bunch. I was trying save my energy for when it mattered, so I tried to keep at the front but out of mischief. This went very well until I got caught out down the back straight and into the wind. I’d not managed to find shelter behind anyone and was losing places quickly. I noticed that Sigma Sport super star Andrew Bye was looking to make a move so I had a split second decision to make! Either try and follow Andrew Bye’s wheel and see if I could get a tow to the front, or stay where I was and lose places all the way down the long back straight.

I decided to follow Andrew who made his way to the front of the pack and was trying everything he could to split up the race. His team mate Steve Golla repeated the move, which left me hanging on for dear life! After taking some time to recover for the finish I moved to the front with15 mins to go. I used loads of energy hoding my place and this was wearing me down for the last 5 laps.

I was in a reasonable place for the finish but by this point two riders, Paul Pickup and Clive Nicholls (who recently won the Willesden CC Cat 3/4 road race) managed to get away and the rest of the bunch was strung out for the finish. I was placed badly for the sprint and had to settle forcoming in 34th place.

I see new member Richard Cooper has starting riding the 4th cat races, if Richard or anyone else would like to get involved with more racing please contact me on richiej1979@hotmail.com

Richard Jerome

This first reliability trial is the well-known Harp Hilly Hundred starting and finishing also at the Hemel Hempstead CC clubroom. This starts off following a similar route as the Hemel event through to Chesham then it takes on its own character taking on the hilly bits of the northern Chilterns through Berkhamsted, Whipsnade (the infamous Bison Hill) then onto Aston Hill near Halton and tracking back through Tring, Ivinghoe Beacon, Whelpley Hill via White Hill to the clubroom for a well earned rest.

With a whole 4 hours sleep under the belt, I woke up feeling.. um.. rough. My eyes were shot – dehydration does this. Coffee and Vegemite toast to the rescue. Prepped the bike (riding the Ribble as I’ve not finished tweaking the S-Works) and packed some muesli bars, a gel, sweets, the GPS (which had the Hemel club room added as a waypoint and a route hastily copied from Google Maps using GMapToGPX), my multi-tool, spare batteries and wet weather gear (although the forecast was good, you never know). I had planned to leave all this in my bag at the club rooms but this didn’t happen.

I left the house around 7am after printing a Google Map route sheet. 32k to ride start. Rode through Greenford, Harrow, Watford and then.. got lost. I took the wrong exit in some messy friggin’ round-a-bout system in some stupid piddly friggin’ town and headed the wrong way for a while before realising. Now I’m running behind schedule! Angry. Didn’t want to up the pace too much as I’m trying to get miles in and not explode my legs too soon.

I met a guy on a bike and he knew the club rooms so we rode together for a short while, until we spotted some more cyclists who it turned out were doing the Harp Hilly 100. These guys had already started and suggested I should just start. So I did. I didn’t really think it through but it meant that I saved £4 (sarcastic woo!) it also meant I had no map and I was carrying my bag full of crap and still had my lights on.. um.. oh well, too late now. Hang on! One of the guys had a new Pinarello, picked up the day before. I don’t think he liked that I’d left my day-old machine at home and he was on his. Turns out they had taken a wrong turn almost straight away (hippy gets lost #2) and we carried on alone until a junction where we could pick up some other bunches.

Once ‘on’ it was quite good rolling along in a group of 20 or so at reasonable pace. The bunch strung out at the first big climb. No idea what it was called or where it was but it was reasonably steep. To keep the HR down I was in my lowest gear (39/25 I think). Rejoined bunch and repeated this process a few times – there’s some nice climbs around this part and the weather was sweet.

Riding up the steep Bison Hill I passed Willesden CC’s ‘Mike the Bike’ and said g’day or something. I was probably a bit vague at that point. He said there were big bunches up ahead so I pushed on, grabbing a muesli bar when my HR had dropped at the top. Rejoined a bunch that had some familiar people in it and at some point here I was dropped, I think? I’m not actually sure but I remember passing two women riding together and then stopping as my back was hurting so much I had to stretch my hamstrings and then the two women passed, asking if I was okay.

No one was coming along the road so I basically chased down the bunch the women were in and tagged on. These guys ride for an MTB club and were training for the Marmotte. We ended up riding up Ivanhoe Beacon, only to get to the top and realise we’d taken a wrong turn somewhere! (lost hippy #3). The consensus was that we’d cut out 1/4 to 1/3 of the course, including Aston Hill but at the top of Ivanhoe you don’t really want to ride back the way you came just to do it all over again later. A pox on the riders near us that failed to mention our wrong turning! Ah well, we continued on.

We did some more map checks and more climbs along the way while I started to suffer a bit – my back again and tiredness. I was sitting on the front though, with another mtb’er bloke, with the two women o’ Marmotte behind so it wasn’t like I wasn’t working with the group. I’d pass them all going up hill but I’d suffer on the rolling/flat (very odd for me! I usually power the flat and suffer up hill). The guy pretty much knew the way back so with a few close calls with Sunday driving buffoons in European saloons we made it back to the Hemel club rooms.

I bid my bunch farewell and decided that the option of returning to Ealing by train was too painful and as it only saved me 10k it was hardly worth it. So, I turned around and cycled back home. This added another 32k to the clock and saw me arriving home in a bit of a state. Ouch. 🙂

144.2k for the day (supposed to be 100k) and it was actually closer to 100k on Saturday although it should have been 60k according to my program :S How do you spell ‘burn out’?

The Team Quest Reliability ride starts much closer to home and will be more like a club run for me.

Hippy (AKA Stuart Birnie)

(Full article appears on Hippy’s Blog Site – http://www.thehippy.net/nucleus/?itemid=967.)

The Uxbridge Golf Club survived another onslaught from the Willesden CC on 19th January for our annual Dinner and Dance. As usual there was a last minute flurry in ticket sales and around 60 of the WCC finest settled down for an evening of prize giving, dining, raffles, dances, speeches, toasting, wine tasting, beer tasting and on occasions Sambuca tasting.

Our Guest of Honour this year was John McMillan. John gave an excellent speech that recounted many of the clubs achievements during the year. He also presented all of the trophies to the club’s champions. Well Done John!

A big thank you must also go to Gladys and Hilary who organised the event. Unfortunately Hilary had to return to her work in deepest Siberia, so was unable to attend. Jim and Wendy did a great job with the raffle and there was a vast array of prizes to be won.

Mike celebrating his lofty new status as a Willesden Grandee, or Life Membership as it is officially called.

Ian and Pauline Why also become Willesden “Lifers”, following 21 years of continuous membership.

After 21 years of stealth membership Nigel Haselden broke his cover to receive his Life time Membership.

The Sash of Honour was awarded to Ray Kelly for all his work for the club during the past year.

Gladys gave a very warm speech welcoming all non-members to the evening’s proceedings.

L to R John McMillan, Jimmy Love (Club President) and Janice Kelly (Mrs Sash-of-Honour)

John presents Sean Bannister with a CTC award for the best passing impression of Bruce Forsyth.

Ron Purdy scoops the Marshalling trophy

Richard Jerome accepts the Mens Road Race Trophy. Well done Richard and keep those race reports coming through.

Peter Turnbull is the WCC’s Audax champion and also has retained the UK’s Audax championship for a second year running. An impressive achievement.

Brian Moon is always a trophy winner at the D&D. This year he collects the Veterans Time Trial Championship

Chris James, known to all of us as Jumbo James receives his award.

Ed Packard wins a sack full of trophies for –

Mens Time Trial Champion (24.72 mph)

Dunning Cup (Fastest 25 mile TT)

Alf Peyton Cup (Fastest 50 mile TT)

Palmer Trophy (Fastest 100 miles TT).

Another trophy for Ed

Darlene Rini gets the Ladies Audax trophy for the most number of points in a season. She also received the Audax Merit trophy for completing the Paris-Brest-Paris within 80 hours even though operating mainly on Pacific Coast time!

Jayne Paine won the Ladies Road Race Championship, retaining it from the previous year.

Exhausted (Ed-huasted?) by the weight of his trophy haul, Ed is supported by the Purdys

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Members of the Middle Earth Wheelers??

Paul Stewart has supplied me with a list of all WCC Audax events being run this year. Ivo Meisen in Holland is also organising a couple of events. In total we have over 3,200 kms of organised rides across the UK and in the Netherlands.

Click on “Whats on with the Willesden CC” for a full list of all WCC Events.

Miles Back

A lot has happened and a lot is happening with one of the world’s leading Audax clubs.
Who’s that then? Why the Willesden CC, silly!

1. Peter Turnbull – AUK Champion again

The ever-sunny Peter Turnbull has retained his Audax UK championship. This is a magnificent achievement and Peter joins a very select group of riders to have defended his crown. Well done Peter. Also well done to Ken Turnbull who has supported Peter through out his audax career.

2. Calais-Brindisi Audax Ride
Is the Sunday club ride a bit short for you?
Have you always wondered if there is life beyond the Boulters Lock Cafe?
Are you tired of beans-on-toast?

Then sign up for one of the classic Audax rides, the Calais-Brindisi. Many of the Willesden CC Audax Grandees cut their teeth on the fabulous ride through the culinary first world of France and Italy.

Martin Lucas is planning to ride this wonderful route during late August/early September 2008. It will involve 2600 km and 13 days of the best cycling France and Italy have to offer. Any experienced WCC members interested in this challenging ride should contact Martin on Willesdencyclingclub@yahoo.co.uk (Put Calais-Brindisi in the Subject field).

3. Mille Miglia
The Willesden team for the 1600km Mille Miglia ride is growing by the week. Mark Brooking, Ray Kelly, Yoshi, Akiko and Paul Stuart are starting to limber up for the event.

4. Audax Helpers of the Year – Tracey and Diane Horsman
Tracey and Diane have been voted by Audax UK as Helpers of the Year.

This was for their gruelling support on the “Beast from the East”, a 600km PBP qualifier. The event was run in the most dreadful conditions. Tracey and Di Set up two feed mobile feeding stations at Goring and at Middle Wallop. Without these vital stops many more riders would have DNF’ed.

5. Audacious as ever – The Willesden 2008 Audax program.
As usual, Willesden has a program of Audax events running through the year, kicking off with the Willy Warmer and its young friend, The Little Willy, on January 26th. These events start from the Community Centre at Chalfont St Peter at 8:00 and 8:30 respectively where they head off in the direction of Pangbourne for a café stop at the Jolly Good Food Co. The Little Willys then head for home whilst the (by now) Warm Willys make for Hungerford across the rolling Newbury downs.

I’m also recruiting riders for an Easter Arrows to York at, er, Easter, which falls on the 6th April this year. Unlike most Audaxes, Arrows (or Fleche as they are known on the continent) are a traditional Audax event where teams of 3 to 5 riders complete a pre-specified route of at least 360km within a 24 hour period starting on Good Friday in the general direction of York. (Most Arrows finish at the train station for some unknown reason!). The sting in the tail is that the last 25km must be completed within the last two hours of the ride to make it a real 24hr outing. This requires careful planning but if you get it right you can usually have a couple of hours sleep along the way. Of course, if you are riding with Mel Kirkland & co and shooting for a distance of 500km or more its unlikely you’ll be stopping for a nap!

PBPers will be interested to know that Arrows are validated by ACP and count towards the illustrious Brevet 5000 and 25000 awards, so if you completed PBP you’ll definitely be wanting an Arrow ride. I will be organizing a team shooting for 400km so if you’d like to find out more, or indeed are thinking of putting together a team together aiming for a longer distance, drop me a line (Willesdencyclingclub@yahoo.co.uk Put “Arrow” in the Subject field) and we’ll see you in York!

For full details of the Audax events, see the Audax calendar at www.aukweb.net which includes entry and contact details.

Regards,
Paul Stewart
Willesden C.C. Touring Secretary

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Hi Folk,

There is a really good write up with photos of the New Years Day Parade on the British Cycling Website (http://tinyurl.com/yw69zy). All thanks to Josie for sending it in to them.

Cheers

Ray

The Audax Email group has posted the following URL regarding the sentencing of driver who hit Simon.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1031648_top_coach_in_drinkdrive_horror

Also see
https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/localuserpage.asp?ae_bae=T&page=6635

Matthew Parris is a journalist for The Times. In a recent article (27th December 2007) he asked the question “What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?” In his article he commends his readers to to string piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists.

Please read the article at the following and register your vote on this blog.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article3097464.ece

Miles Back found this documentary on the HPV world speed records fascinating. Is he moving over to the Dark Side?

Thanks to Ron Purdy for the following New Years Day pictures.

Jan, Jumbo, Yoshi and Peter Turnbull at the start.

Perhaps these two should be at Canary Wharf?

The May-Wilmot mobile field kitchen sets up outside the Houses of Parliament. Did they remember the HP sauce??

The Hobbs sport their Bromptons.

The variety of machines continues with Mark and Wendy Brooking’s “longbarrow”

The Willesden and the Slipstreamers get set for the off.

Kone Kraft.

John Tipping lines himself up for a go at the Slipstreamers cone slalom

Ron and Glad chill out in the Green room after the gig

The annual Willesden Dinner and Dance will be held on Saturday,19th January 2008. The venue as usual will be the Uxbridge Golf Club, The Drive, Uxbridge, UB10 8AQ.

The set menu is-

After the prize giving, toasting and general mickey taking there will also be an opportunity to do some bopping.

The tickets are £25 per head, a price that that has been held for many years.

Please contact Glays Purdy on PurdyandPurdy@aol.com to reserve your place. Please state how many places you would like to and if you require the vegatarian option.

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Richard Jerome is looking for someone who has access to photo and image editing software to help with the new Willesden CC website.

He is also looking for someone with a high quality digital camera (perhaps an SLR) to help with photography.

If you think you can help please contact Richard on richiej1979@hotmail.com

A really nice day but very windy!

I didn’t feel that great from training but decided pretty early that I would need to stay at the front of the race to ensure I was in the right place when the race split up. It was too windy for it to stay together.

I was trying my best to stay in all the moves, which used all my energy. When the move happened I was caught out at the back again! At that point it looked like my race was pretty much over as I think 20+ riders had got away.

I’d pretty much accepted defeat but was riding hard to make the most of the training opportunity. Then in the distance we saw the group in front of us and this gave us all hope. The top riders had got away from them forcing the rest to slow down and we soon caught them.

Once the race came together again I decided to use the opportunity to have a rest as I’d spent most of the race in the red. This was one of the hardest races I’d ridden in ages! There were still 6 riders away from us but it looked like a sprint would decide their final placings.

The remaining laps saw a rider pull off one of his cranks. His pedal was still clipped in and the crank arm was left dangling from his shoe! Luckily I avoided the incident and was well placed for the sprint .A rider tried to get away with half a lap remaining and I didn’t react quickly enough which left me towards the back of the bunch and I only finished in 27th place.

I’m not sure if I will race the rest of the series as I’m in need of some serious mileage. However I will keep you updated if I do decide to turn up.

Richard Jerome

Well I’m sure we all urge Richard to continue racing. He has a good battling spirit and he gives a good insight into race tactics. Keep racing Richard! Miles Back

Mark Brooking has just sent in his portfolio of pictures from yesterday’s parade. Here they are ….

The band’s play and the curtain is just about to go up.

Slipstreamers strut their stuff through the cones and under the limbo bar….

… followed by a bit of joined up riding!

Not sure how the young lady on the ordinary will cope with the limbo bar!

Wendy Brooking meets a new friend.

Julie May and her magic bottle kept us warm at the end of the ride.

Everybody enjoyed the day, well almost everybody!!

There was a very good turnout from the Willesden CC and the Slipstreamers on today’s New Year’s Day Parade in Central London. Banners and club colours were paraded and various displays of bike handling skills were given.

Miles Back

Ron Purdy wearing his “flasher” jacket

Milling about, waiting for the show to start.

Kieth Elliot leads out the teams on to Trafalgar Sq.

• The meeting point is in the Blue assembley area.
• Entry to this area is at the junction of Horseferry Road and Millbank.
• We will be along Millbank towards Abingdon Street. (Near to the Houses of Parliament).
• Please arrive by 11.30am (Tuesday 1st January 2008).

Please wear a version of the Willesden kit. You won’t need cycling shoes as the event is very stop-start and there will be periods when we will be stationary. Wrap up warm underneath. It has been known to be nippy on New Year’s Day.

Happy Christmas to all Willesden CC members. Thank you to all of you who have made contributions to the blog site over the year.

Wishing you every speed and success for 2008

Miles Back

The weather was looking much better this Saturday and a field of 53 riders turned up for this weeks race. The race was fast with all of the big hitters trying their best to get away from the bunch. I got in a couple of breaks but neither of these came to anything.

I was well placed for the last 10 laps but with 2 laps to go a rider sat up in front on me causing me to have to swerve into the grass. I got back into the bunch in time for the sprint but I didn’t have the legs to make anything of it and finished in 33rd place.

Two riders were away from the bunch with 5 laps to go and were only caught in the last 150 metres. I little disappointed after the last two weeks success but it was good training.

I am planning to ride boxing day but this will depend on how hungover I am.

Merry Xmas to everyone!

Richard Jerome

Richard’s adapted bike for his Boxing Day Race.


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