I’ll bet his school report said, “Excellent athletic ability”. I’m talking about Chris Whitelam, although it might have applied to Andy Barnes also. A real top notch performance from Chris with over a minute to spare, and this from Andy Barnes who seems to go better with every event and him with the same margin over Dean Fulstow – no mean player by any account.

Signs that spring is coming at last, the temperature around 17ºC, bright and sunny but a fairly stiff south westerly wind; it’s never completely perfect. Vince Cartwright was first back past the timekeeper in 16.48 and this looked good until Mattie Barratt returned with 15.44. You have to compare this time with others to see how good it was: John Lockwood 16.49, Paul Kilvington 16.07, Mark Summer 16.13, Chris Burton 16.11, Nathan Chester 16.18, Paul Jolliffe 16.10 and Paul Purdy 16.51. Only four faster than him: Derek Palmer 15.14, Dean Fulstow 14.55, Andy Barnes 14.40 and, no surprise really, Chris Whitelam 13.55. I seem to remember young Mattie showing some pretty good form early last year and this shows he has it in him.

Vince stayed out front and finished with a 33 but this was short lived when Mattie returned a 31 which was to stay on the leaderboard for another ten minutes when Derek Palmer sliced three quarters of a minute off it. Dean was the next beating 31 minutes and it was just the two star larkers to beat the half hour – 12 miles under half an hour on this circuit in this wind deserves a bit of praise.

Interesting to compare the first and second laps; there is a slight difference between first and second, maybe 150 yards which approximates 5-10 seconds and there would be a slight slowing down in the second. It’s one way of assessing your fitness; did you start too fast and were unable to sustain it?, did you start too slow and could have gone faster?, did you warm up sufficiently? Were you caught earlier than expected or have problems catching your minute man? Andy Barnes, Paul Kilvington and Vince Cartwright were very consistent, in fact Vince went faster the second lap. Biggest relative loser was Paul Purdy but there was also consistency from Mark Walker, Mike Kilgour and, as always, Mick Adams.

Maybe it was the warm weather but there were some good rides. In picking my man of the match it is difficult to overlook Chris W and Andy B but I’ve got to choose Mattie Barratt today.

There was some errors in the original results. These are the final corrected results. (***** Denotes Private Ride)