The Beacon Message Board

Just Martin (McGowan) and myself subjected ourselves to the club 50 mile time trial run by Shirley RC.
Times are as follows

Simon Dighton 2-02-11
Martin McGowan 2-04-3x (should have written down, apols Martin, I was knackered, know it is 2-04 and I think 39 secs)

Also on the handicap Martin gets 39 points (had an estimate of 2-04-00), mine was a pb by 37 secs so I grab the 40

Have to say that felt like really hard work today
Best
Simon

My time was 2:04:32 Simon. Congratulations on retaining the club 50 championship for another year & setting a PB into the bargain.

Great stuff!

Congratulations on the championship, Simon. And hard luck, Martin: I should think that that time would have won you the trophy most years.

So was this a Beacon event? I didn't know about this (its not on the calandar) and note that some big scores have been awarded in the handicap comp.

It's a Shirley RC event that doubles as the Beacon 50 championship. It's listed under open events here: http://www.beaconrcc.org.uk/club_races/ ... index.html.

That was the page i was referring to Laurence. But I've never scrolled down that far. I'm going to stop reading the club page on a smartphone and use a proper computer monitor next season so I don't miss out on handicap points from not reading something in the page footer. That's to say nothing about the chosen date and conflicting club events.

BTW - well done Simon and Martin. I didn't want to detract from your performances today. This isn't sour grapes:)

toby wrote:That's to say nothing about the chosen date and conflicting club events.

I imagine there aren't many local 50-mile TTs that the club can choose from when designating one as the club championships, and it's obviously up to Shirley when they hold their event. I don't know for sure, but the audax may well have already been scheduled for today when Shirley announced the date of the 50.

I get that Laurence. But if Simon hadn't raced today, Martin would've got 40 points for the handicap comp, unchallenged by anyone else at the top of the table who was supporting a major club event.

Worth noting that according to http://www.cyclingtimetrials.org.uk/events, the Shirley is the only 50-mile TT in the Midland region in the whole of 2015.

Laurence is right on both counts. It's the only 50 for us to use as the club 50 champs. The Audax date was set before the date of the 50 was known.

Yes. Both valid points. And the club absolutely needs a 50 champs. But if future schedule conflicts occur, the TT should be removed as a contributing event towards the handicap comp when the date is published.

... or the number of points on offer should be weighted by the low turn out. There were two riders entered. They scored 40 and 39 points. A third person, high in the table in the handicap comp could have entered today, rolled round in three and a half hours and score 38 points.

I missed that as well, might have ridden that as I wasn't riding the Audax . Still Cleaning the windows was fun as well!

In a way though it's worked out fine. All of the people in close competition for this trophy didn't ride it. Martin although in the lead at the mo has fast times for all the courses left so realistically probably won't win it anyway. So it's kept it all close.

To be honest I'd forgotten about the 50 too otherwise I would have pushed it a bit sorry about that.

We actually used to organise our own '50' championship in the 1950/ 60's, held on a variation of K36.
Probably had a dozen or more entries and the event was properly marshalled by club members, and that from a much smaller membership than we have today.

Also had our own '100' championship, organised as an inter-club event with three other local clubs.

Just saying...

The Shirley 50 once clashed with the Cotswold Audax when I was running the latter, and afterwards a couple of Shirley people asked if we could avoid future clashes, because they have to marshal their 50, and therefore miss out on our audax, which they like. The traditional date for the 50 is the middle weekend of June and the traditional date for the audax is the weekend closest to the solstice. Personally, I feel that that is usually the best arrangement. However, I believe that Pete was specifically asked to run the audax earlier this year to avoid some other clash.

Hopefully, the same situation won't arise next year, but if it does the impact can be diminished by good communication about counting events, their dates and the implications.

As it happens, there's unlikely to be any major impact, because both Simon and Martin (as riders who have already done good times on all counting courses) will find it very hard to win the handicap comp, which is normally dominated by riders who improve a lot on their earlier performances.

PS: CTT event dates aren't published until after we fix our audax date, but it's easy enough to find out when the Shirley are intending to run their event.

Thanks all. As I said earlier, I didn't want this to sound like sour grapes and definitely did not want to offer anything other than congratulations to Simon and Martin for those excellent times. And add appreciation to Patch et al for their efforts over the season.

But last night, after a long day in the saddle, reading this result felt like that moment at the end of Bullseye when Jim Bowen said to some plucky losers who failed to score 101 or more with six darts "Come and have a look at what you could've won".

toby wrote:Thanks all. As I said earlier, I didn't want this to sound like sour grapes and definitely did not want to offer anything other than congratulations to Simon and Martin for those excellent times. And add appreciation to Patch et al for their efforts over the season.

But last night, after a long day in the saddle, reading this result felt like that moment at the end of Bullseye when Jim Bowen said to some plucky losers who failed to score 101 or more with six darts "Come and have a look at what you could've won".

It's a speedboat!!!