e72

@dommyracer - yup!

And as so many asked for the pic, here it is!

Well, it's kind of posted I guess!

Thanks for all the great comments!

Cheers

N

I enjoyed reading that very much. top post!

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It was a 653 frame with chrome dropouts, highlights around lugs in red, campag throughout, cinelli bars and stem, mavic rims - I worked in a bike shop at the time so..... 86".

Saturday 16th June, 1979.

Chelmer Middle Markers’ 25, E72,. 1.00.00.limit.
My current p.b. 1.03.16. (Amersham Road)

It’s a hot Saturday afternoon, a car problem makes me late and I arrive at the start timekeeper with about 30 seconds in hand. No warm up, but the adrenaline is flowing because of the rush and the fear of a late start ruining what looks like a promising day. I’m no. 42, and yes I do know about Hitch Hikers’ Guide and the mice.

The pusher off launches me onto what looks and sounds like a motorway. The surface is concrete slabs with tar jointing. I seem to be going well, quickly passing a few backmarkers and after about 10 miles I catch no. 40, a seeded rider. I’m pushing hard but not feeling any pain; the whole thing feels abnormal – dreamlike.

A marshal sends me off the main road into an industrial estate and the finish timekeeper. It seems too quick- I begin to wonder if I’ve missed out a leg of the course. I’ve no watch so I don’t have any idea what I’ve done until it goes up on the result board – 59.04.

This makes me 6th to the winner’s 57.50 (J. Sparrow). I don’t care, I’m just dead chuffed to get under.

The next morning I’m tired, but I force myself to go and ride my club’s Midsummer 25 just to be able to mention, casually of course, what I’d done the previous afternoon. My time on the local course is back to sad reality – 1.04.31. (winner 59.32), but I’m still basking in the sun of that brilliant Saturday afternoon.

There is a moral here: if your only experience of time trialling is on a back road club course and your results seem like rubbish, don’t give up! Those fabulous times other people tell you about have probably been done somewhere like the E72, and on a good day at that.

Remember main road courses can be dangerous. If you have dependents and a love of life you might like to consider just lopping 5 minutes off what you did on the club course.

[/IMG]

It was a 653 frame with chrome dropouts, highlights around lugs in red, campag throughout, cinelli bars and stem, mavic rims - I worked in a bike shop at the time so..... 86".

Love the bike!

Saturday 16th June, 1979.

Nothing like 1987, eh? :)

I actually opened this thread as I thought it was about the latest incarnation of my Nokia...

Don't you just love serendipity!

My dad must have raced E72 when he was in the Ipswich Bicycle Club. I'll see if he remembers anything. I've only ridden along the A12 a couple of times and it scared me shitless. Even on a fast motorcycle I don't like riding on that stretch.

Yes, he did...

[INDENT]Yep, I sure did ride the dreaded A12. I competed in 10, 25, and 30 mile time trials held by the Essex and Suffolk Border Cycling Combine to which our club was affiliated. The ESBCC weren't allotted the 'choice' times (floaty Sunday mornings in summer) for their events and all of them were held on midweek evenings. Only 120 riders were allowed to start in TTs so the clubs running events on that course could take their pick from the fastest riders in the country, who were queuing up to ride the E72 or the 'Borough' one up in Yorkshire.

The best I did in a 25 was 1-1-41, in June 1980, so the Quinn was 6 months old. I finished in 27th place on time, 6th on handicap (it was my first season of racing again after nearly 20 years. Being an evening event the drag factor wasn't strong. The outer leg of the course is longer so It's not your usual halfway out and back one. Dave Godbold (our club's best rider, caught me at the turn for 2 minutes and finished in 56-43 to get 3rd place overall) so I was heading for a finishing time well under the hour but I got cramp in my right leg just after the turn and more or less limped to the finish.

The scariest race I rode on it was a 50 mile TT. That wasn't an ESBCC event but was promoted by the Viking RC. My start time was at 6am on a Sunday morning in late September. I rode in thick fog, and needless to say, there was little traffic. I finished in 2.15.39, my eyeballs popping with trying to keep the white line of the road edge in sight! The conditions were so bad that, halfway through, the police stopped the race until the fog cleared. So it was a bit of a lottery really, with the second half of the field riding in sunshine and of course producing much faster times.[/INDENT]

The bike also had chrome drop outs.

I ended up working at Allins for a couple of years, just after John and Ray bought it from Stan and Anne Butler, grandparents of Gethin I believe. The shop is long since closed but I do remember as a customer queuing to get service as dear Stan and Anne didn't have a till as such, they hand wrote every sale on a till roll and used a wooden draw for the cash...

The course was/is somewhat controversial because it is asymmetric and the prevailing winds assist on the longer outbound leg.